Pierre Novellie protests that life is getting harder for observational comedians because, in these siloed times, we have so few reference points in common. It would be a more persuasive theory if he didn’t begin his show with two of the most relatable topics known to comedy, becoming middle-aged and moving to the suburbs. He’s clever and funny on both, mind you, and throughout a show that, at least for a while, cleaves to familiar tropes of thirtysomething standup: fussiness about dishwasher stacking; fear of turning into a “crusty old colonel”.
You might incline to the conclusion that the South African-born Brit is a better writer than he is a performer. His one-liners are frequently dazzling (“I played rugby at school the same way that horses fought in the war”) but his show is formally conventional and his delivery a little stiff. I spent a portion of the show thinking along those lines, until the sheer quality of Novellie’s routines in its second half bulldozed my resistance. His grumpy riff on how people dress in airports, with a droll sidebar on Winnie the Pooh’s couture, is fun, but pales next to its succeeding section, on the game of chicken Novellie played with the cleaners in his Melbourne hotel.
That routine is a mini-masterpiece of extensio ad absurdum, as applied to the hotel’s eco-friendly laundry policy. The show is then rounded off with the mock-epic shaggy dog story of Novellie’s house move, which finds him lumbering across London with six tote bags of bleeding beef strung from his neck. OK, so he’s not as expansive a personality on stage as the comedians (Rhod Gilbert, Ian Smith) whose work this hapless misadventure recalls. There are occasional hints meanwhile that his crusty-colonel curmudgeonliness may be more than just a caricature.
But, particularly in that climactic set piece, he shows that his range of expression, if narrow, remains potent: see the wrung-out thousand-yard stare with which he greets his removal men as they separately reach their destination: “I’m not the man they left behind.” If this is observational comedy in 2026 – well, there’s life in the old dog yet.
• At Soho theatre, London, until 31 January. Then touring
