Lockdown cultureComedy This article is more than 3 years oldReviewJigsy review – Les Dennis sheds tears of a clown for comedy's lost era
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The scuzzy end of show business and all its sozzled, sentimental excesses are captured by the ex-standup in a heartfelt monologue
I last saw Les Dennis on stage two years ago, playing a washed-up, old-school comic in the Park theatre’s End of the Pier. Now comes an online revival – by Liverpool’s Royal Court theatre – of his old-school, washed-up comic Jigsy, in Tony Staveacre’s slight but keenly felt 2012 play. It is a character that Dennis has down pat, and his performance is the standout reason to watch this 50-minute monologue, which waxes nostalgic for working man’s comedy and rehearses a few tears-of-a-clown cliches.
It unfolds backstage at one of Jigsy’s gigs. Taking a break for the bingo, he talks to us about his life in scuzzy showbiz: the brushes with fame on Opportunity Knocks, the time he puked on stage, plus tragicomic Tommy Cooper anecdotes and tales of Billy Bennett at the Empire. You can see why Liverpool audiences might love it. It’s a love letter to the city, full of references to Jigsy’s previous life as a docker, to rough nights in the Eagle and Child and to the 1939 sinking in Liverpool Bay of the HMS Thetis, in which Jigsy’s uncle and 98 others died.
That tale necessitates quite a tonal shift towards the end of the show, in service of Staveacre’s claim that, for this generation of blue-collar comics, joking was a necessary response to tragedy and tough lives. It’s been said before; likewise the (highly partial) connections Jigsy makes between comedy, alcohol and an early grave. But Dennis makes you feel it as well as hear it. He’s a sad sack, of course: wheezing, pot-bellied, pint of mild in hand. But the tears of this clown are often those of laughter, as he rejoices at another saucy seaside punchline – or at the buzz he gets off a really good night on stage. Ex-standup Dennis can still tell a mean joke and knock off some killer impersonations, too.
That buys him our indulgence – just about – for Jigsy’s self-mythologising and sozzled sentimentality. It’s a really watchable turn, in a solo show that’s a bit too elegiac for a boozy male comedy culture to which few would wish to return.
Jigsy is available on YouTube.
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