The nihilistic American returns to London. Mike Stephenson is along for the ride.
Doug Stanhope is back. He's here for a little longer every year, this time for a full two-week run. This is possibly on the heels of his Newswipe appearances, and probably because of the record-breaking bar takings his fans run up. As a long standing ass-kisser of his, I'm almost out of things to say. He, of course, isn't.
He's never short of caustic stabs at the idea of romance: his whole “If you want romance, psychologically torture your man into hitting you” routine gets louder and more fleshed out every time I hear it. Most of his gripes culminate inevitably into a vile piece of sexual imagery, but it never sounds like smut. It always sounds like the brutally honest death rattle of a man's depleting interest in sex (quotation of the night – “I just drain it like a cyst to a 30 second mpeg.” Nice.)
It's not all sex. Still with that skill for taking controversial topics and opening out the folds that you hadn't even thought of, he t-bones into the year's events with his twist on the BP spill and the flip-side of Mel Gibson's issues. His bewildered and dismissive take on the week's local news is refreshingly brief, like a series of satisfying but inoffensive half-burps. In fact he spends his first stretch bitching about the British and how much he hates being here, to which we naturally cackle and holler in agreement and delight.
It's not that Doug makes you feel bad. Okay, it is. But there's nothing wrong with feeling bad if it's in healthy moderation. Doug himself seems palpably burnt out. Sherlock Holmes had his "three pipe problems." Evidently tonight was one of Doug's "three Jaeger-bomb" ordeals. He's almost apologetic for his clunkiness. He doesn't seem to realise that we love him precisely because of his clunk. We didn't come for choreographed clowning, we came to hear a regular Joe armed only with the power of reason, barking stinky wet mouthfuls of hate speeches at the moon. In this sense it's impossible for him to disappoint. He could wander out on stage, yell, “Shut up I've got a headache” flip us the bird and leave. None of us would blame him. We'd cheer louder than ever.
That's the Stanhope paradox – The more hate he gives, the more love he gets back. The more jaded and uncommitted he gets, the more authentic he is. He's like a Samuel Beckett play, but with his own teeth. A desaturated ghoul, emergent yet unyielding, unable to look us in the eye, pacing like an orphaned ape from corner to corner, embracing the slow burn of decay. I emailed him before the show and as an incentive I promised him that I'd commit spectacular suicide if he, so to speak, killed. And he did. But God damn him, he went and made the darkness mean something. Now I have to live.
You win again, Doug. See you next year.
Doug Stanhope is at the Leicester Square Theatre until the 11th September.
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