What is James Acaster?
James Acaster (the show) by James Acaster (the man) is a metatheatrical mind-blower that has Isobel Lewis questioning the entire concept of truth in live comedy
A slightly early Easter treat for you today, readers – we have Isobel Lewis unpacking the elaborate metatheatrical layers of James Acaster, a carefully constructed new show exploring the fraught concept of the on-stage persona. But first! here’s the theatrical equivalent of the Easter Bunny, giving out sweet ticket deals: our sponsor today is the Park Theatre, with a better-than-half-price promo code for Karis Kelly’s Women’s Prize for Playwriting winning play, Consumed…
From our sponsor: Exclusive £25 ticket offer for Consumed
A 90th birthday party that no-one seems to want. Four generations of Northern Irishwomen, reunited under one roof. A house full of hungry ghosts, with more than one skeleton in the closet. Following a hit tour and a sell-out run at the Edinburgh Fringe, Karis Kelly’s award-winning Consumed transfers to the Park Theatre in a brand new staging. A pitch-black and twisted comedy of dysfunctional families, generational trauma and national boundaries.
Apply promo code CONEASTER at checkout for £25 tickets for performances from Friday 3 April to Wednesday 8 April on Band A+ to C tickets (usually up to £52.50).
‘While pretending to be someone completely different, Acaster is letting us in’
By Isobel Lewis
Who is James Acaster? Or rather, what is James Acaster? It’s a slightly odd question, but one most comedy fans likely have an answer to. Those who know him from his prolific panel show days probably picture a gangly 20-something-year-old (he’s now 41) in skinny jeans and a plaid shirt or hoodie. If you’re more of an Acaster aficionado, you might go to his material: political humour that punches squarely up, surreal storytelling and confessional musings on mental health. Or maybe you just think of the memes, from Acaster’s viral Gervais routine to his Bake Off breakdown.
Heading to watch Acaster on his new tour, I felt I had a pretty good sense of who the comic is. Yet in his new hour, Acaster collects what we think we know about him and amps it up to cartoonish, almost grotesque levels. It’s a performance piece that James Acaster (the man) could not have made when he was derailing shows at the slightest audience interruption, nor when he was considering quitting comedy altogether. This is Acaster at his most theatrical, and somehow, his most honest too.
Some crucial housekeeping up top: James Acaster is the performer, yes, but for this hour, it’s actually the name of the show. You see, we’re not watching Acaster but… well, I’ll get to that. But the second the conceit is revealed, it quickly becomes clear that James Acaster (the show) is a complex, multi-layered parody piece, an exploration of the modern day comedian as content and catchphrase creator, that is somehow unrelentingly funny too. And that deep metatheatricality and carefully constructed craftsmanship is what made me want to write about it for Exeunt. Stand-up comedy criticism is somehow an even more languishing medium than theatre writing – but this was a theatrical experience, and deserved to be treated as such.
I wasn’t planning on writing about Acaster’s show when I bought the tickets (a common theme in my writing for this publication, apparently), nor did I have a sense of what was to come when I entered the theatre. Perhaps that most understated of backdrops, the gold fringe curtain, should have been a hint. After all, Acaster has never been afraid of a little comedic razzle dazzle: his Netflix series Repertoire featured fantastical, otherworldly bits about doing jury duty, going into witness protection and a cop called Pat Springleaf who is going undercover as Acaster himself. He is not, however, one of those comedians who has leveraged this into a theatre career (Russell Kane as Romeo, anyone?). No, Acaster’s work is centred on the self; the show’s playful narrative device hinted at in the short but sweet tour bio, which teases “a brand-new show, full of everything you love about James Acaster and more!”
Acaster’s voice floods through the theatre. The audience cheers, a sound which shifts to chuckles and murmurs as he tells us that our tickets have been mis-sold. We’re not here to see James Acaster, but the UK’s premiere James Acaster tribute act, Craig Simons. Out bursts Simons – who is, of course, Acaster – in a shiny suit and comedy tuxedo t-shirt, where he launches into a twitchy, caricatured impersonation of the man whose name is on the poster. “Poppadoms or bread?”, shouts Acaster-as-Simons, and then: “Started making it. Had a breakdown. Bon appetit.”
These are the Acaster’s greatest hits, the catchphrases from his wildly successful food podcast Off Menu and from his Bake Off stint (the emotional toll of which he laid out in his 2019 special Cold Lasagne Hate Myself 1999, where he talks about calling the Samaritans on set). But the Acaster constructed by Simons – yes, I know this is confusing – is more than just quotes and a rise-and-fall vocal pattern since emulated by many a young male comic. Acaster has established himself as a comedian who talks about his mental health, and that means Simons must follow suit, even though he struggles to sympathise with the whinging of a man who earns significantly more money than he does.
 | A guest post by
|