Richard Herring - The Headmaster's Son

Avalon Promotions

Adolescent angst, self-dramatisation and sexual insecurity are not especially original material for stand-up comedy, although Richard Herring puts them in a fresh context by questioning whether his teenage experiences, which included being indeed the headmaster’s son, turned him into the unmarried 40ish comedian he is.

After careful and comic analysis of the evidence, the answer turns out to be maybe. Although Herring can now find all the traumas of his youth comical, he must also recognise that they weren’t particularly traumatic or life-changing. The picture he creates is of a fairly happy and normal kid who might just as easily taken some other path in life, except that he did have a precocious flair for comedy even then.

Herring bravely reads from his teenage diary, taking as much delight in the kid’s egocentricity and pomposity as in his real cleverness. Both the energy level and Herring’s hold on his audience drop significantly towards the end of the hour as nostalgia and philosophising overpower comedy, and Herring ‘s highly-polished delivery – not for him any ad libs, audience interaction or deviations from the memorised script – occasionally threatens to lapse into rote recitation.

Review by Gerry Berkowitz

Published online at 13:11 on Thursday 07 August 2008