Ricky Gervais: Supernature, review: a fun evening’s censor-baiting from a very naughty boy
The world has altered beyond recognition in the past couple of years, but Ricky Gervais’s latest show, which first appeared in 2019, is essentially unchanged, with just one glancing reference to Covid and another to Boris Johnson. Perhaps that’s a relief for audiences – and, indeed, a packed-out Palladium crowd seemed perfectly happy. But it’s an odd choice for a set that still feels like a work-in-progress.
The title ostensibly refers to Gervais’s double mission of debunking the supernatural and celebrating nature. Why bother with angels or ghosts, he argues, when you’ve got the duck-billed platypus? There are good gags at the expense of those who believe they were significant figures in a past life; even if you do accept reincarnation, we can’t all have been queens and emperors.
But Gervais quickly slides off-topic and into a meandering combination of censor-baiting taboos and beige observational comedy. It’s hard to know what Netflix, which has already purchased the show, will do with it. Half is surely unusable (“That won’t make the special!” cries Gervais gleefully at regular intervals), but then do viewers want to see him in Michael McIntyre mode, grumbling about embarrassing medical check-ups, naked men in the gym changing rooms, or his standoffish cat?
As for the more spirited jokes, they’re part of his bullish defence against woke comedy and “safe spaces”. Gervais firmly believes that a stand-up shouldn’t be taken literally – his opening salvo that women aren’t funny is an example of irony, he protests – and that he has a right to talk about anyone; in fact, that’s respecting minorities. Jokes aren’t innately offensive, he adds, so much as individuals can be offended by them. But he’s not kowtowing to those individuals.
It’s a considered take on a hot-button issue. However, his actual set is mainly picking incendiary subjects and seeing how far he can push them, like a naughty child, rather than building an especially clever or revealing joke structure.
He freely admits that his lengthy lesbian fantasy, in which he is transformed into Vicky Gervais, doesn’t actually have a punchline, and labels one gag about self-identification a “hack joke” left in purely to annoy people. Perhaps that’s misleading, though, since he does actually stand up to the trans lobby in interesting ways – like an incisive observation about those who prioritise pronoun use over women’s safety.
Elsewhere, topics feel randomly selected, from name-checking controversial figures like Louis CK, Kevin Hart and Liam Neeson to forced marriage in Pakistan, Pro-Lifers in America, those who believe God punished gay men with Aids, the use of the word “Chinaman”, and masturbating to Hitler’s baby pictures.
Lots of it elicits shocked laughter – there’s a definite thrill about its sheer transgression. Gervais also plays around with his own responsibility, quipping “That’s not me saying that” when spinning a provocative tale, or asking whether we can separate the art from the artist. And he’s very aware that he now speaks from a position of power, with mischievous references to a mansion and millions in the bank.
Still, it’s a step down from his more personally revealing Humanity tour – which, he says, made him fall back in love with stand-up – and his elegiac sitcom After Life. But even a sub-par Gervais is naturally good company.
Selected dates until Nov 13. Tickets: lwtheatres.co.uk