August 17, 2009

Richard Herring at the Underbelly

Sit through Hitler Moustache and you’ll find a really excellent comedy show: an often bitterly funny attack on racism

Dominic Maxwell

Richard Herring’s 25th Fringe show became his most controversial before it even opened, thanks to a nasty spat over a newspaper article that he insisted took lines from it out of context. A bit precious, is he? Well, when your show includes lines such as “I began to think that the racists had a point”, then you, too, would be wary of where they go when you’re not there to look after them. The defence of “irony” is valid, but hardly begins to explain what is going on here.

Well, sit through Hitler Moustache and you’ll find a really excellent comedy show: a playful, pointed and often bitterly funny attack on racism. And if his growing of the ’tache of the title for the show sounds like a stunt for stunt’s sake, Herring is first to list all the potential objections to it. “It’s a lot of commitment,” he booms cheerily, “for what is essentially quite a glib idea.”

Yet this glib idea takes Herring out of his comfort zone of self-mocking self-aggrandisement — or is it self-aggrandising self-mockery? — and gives him something real to rub up against. He recounts his misadventures out and about with a moustache that makes him feel like a leper the moment he leaves the house.

Best of all, he embarks on gloriously specious arguments. “It’s important to respect people’s cultural differences ... is it, though?” He implicates our inner prejudices — getting us to urge him to tell a Madeleine McCann joke, proclaiming himself to be at the mercy of the mob — then deconstructs those prejudices with accuracy and imagination.

If the show has a fault it’s that he ballasts it with too much sincere anti-racism. His lengthy assault on the BNP needs more of the finely tuned false priorities that allow him to have his cake and eat it elsewhere. But towards the end, when he’s debating whether or not he’s mocking prejudice or just wallowing in it, he’s electrifying. Hitler Moustache can’t always make good on its provocative promise. But it’s stimulating, passionate and thoroughly entertaining.

Box office: 0131-226 0000, to Aug 30