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The Guardian

John Early: The Album Tour review – a rich slice of larky self-mockery

For fans of a certain brand of comedy – the comedy that exposes self-fashioning in the age of social media as ridiculous performance – this flying UK visit by John Early has been keenly anticipated. The outre star of millennial self-satire Search Party and sidekick to the brilliant Kate Berlant, Early has spent his career perfectly situated where generational social commentary meets flamboyant silliness. At his best tonight, he richly delivers on the expectation. And even if his best doesn't sustain from start to finish, in the first half, when the Tennessee man addresses himself to frightened, vacuous, deracinated American modernity, he's riveting. What's interesting about Early's approach is that – unlike Berlant, Leo Reich, and others – he doesn't hide behind a character, or a grotesque version of himself. What we get is seemingly the real Early, larking around, sending up his own prissiness a little, but sharing observations on culture and its discontents that are strikingly idiosyncratic and unmistakably his own. Maybe some of the topics are familiar (pretentious food presentation in restaurants, say), but Early's way of digging beneath them into richer cultural subsoil is distinctive. There's a great routine about circumlocutory waiter-speak, and what it says about our fear of directness. Another skit about visiting the toilet while in company is both a goofy piece of self-mockery and a weirdly eloquent delve into shame and carnality in the era of the curated self. I make it sound heavy; it isn't. Early is always on to the next thing, which is often outrageous and uproarious, like his routine about overinvesting in sexual role-play. ('I went full Meryl on his ass!') All of this is punctuated by covers of pop hits by the likes of Madonna, Britney and – in a lovely closing duet with his musical wingman Hess – Dolly Parton. The songs aren't always as gripping as the comedy. There's a fairly basic audience participation interlude, and a sketch in character as denim-clad southern mom Vicky with a V that's diverting, but lower-wattage than what's gone before. It all adds up to a great show, though: entertaining in lots of ways and electrifying in some.