The climax is the breakup, a story centered around how his girlfriend Rowan Atkinson, the comedian best known for playing English comic book institution Mr. Bean, is a specialist in physical problems. In a sad pout, Acaster describes the particularly comical horror of being a young comic that is “left over for Mr. Bean,” a sentence he repeats in a horror film with the urgency of violins. It’s a masterpiece of cringe comedy that he keeps digressing to anticipate criticism that it’s bitter and petty.
Acaster isn’t a comic strip that tells the truth and doesn’t care what people think. He seems concerned about his doing well, but uses his own sensitivity to add another layer of tension to his stories. By explaining the fallout with his agent, he shows he’s fair, so much so that he says he’ll only tell the story from his point of view. It begins, “The first thing you need to know is that I ruined everything and made it laugh.”
It is a familiar trick to ridicule someone by imagining the terrible logic of their thinking, but few have committed to it as completely or as long. Many of Acaster’s jokes have a theatrical quality, and in addition to act-outs, there is an elaborate pantomime with props. He even makes a short chunk of ordering food in a restaurant to illustrate his point of view on Brexit.
He carries out his fights with gusto, and in his argument with his agent, he reminds you of his struggles with mental health that led him to see the therapist, resulting in the most explosive fight on the show. When he takes out his cell phone to read his private text messages to him, he smiles like someone enjoying the pleasure of playing dirty.
This is a show that has clearly gone through many incarnations so with the purchase of Cold Lasagna Hate Myself 1999 you may get another 40 minute performance on similar subjects. Cold lasagna is never actually mentioned, but even “hating myself” seems strange as there is so much other loathing going on here.
Muted anger is sometimes a setup, sometimes a punch line, but always essential to this show. At one point, Acaster says he’s traveled all over the country, adding, “Let me tell you, I hate Britain, absolutely hate it.”
Then he always apologizes about the exact order of the words. “I put it wrong,” he says and pauses. “I hate the British.”
