Holly Williams attends the 20-year-old American YouTube sensation's show and finds the hype was merited.
First, he was a 'YouTube sensation' – a real one, getting millions of hits for acerbically comic songs performed in his bedroom as a teenager. Then, he was a festival sensation, becoming first a word-of-mouth success and then a press pet, with rave reviews across the board. And Bo Burnham has only just turned twenty. Damn him!
Thing is, his debut fringe show Words, Words, Words is fully deserving of the hype. From inside a series of carefully maintained personae – one minute an earnest, bashful 'artist', the next a rap star – Burnham performs his cutting comedy ditties, hip hop numbers which showcase dizzying linguistic play, spoof sonnets and haikus, as well as taking well-aimed swats at every genre of stand-up comedy. It's not genuine – there's no insight into 'the real Bo' – but that's not what the show is about, and his constructs are much more entertaining than the average slice of soul-sharing.
It's very smart stuff. Part of the joy of watching Burnham is trying to keep up with him, to follow the verbal gymnastics of his fast-spat songs, whether he's taking down rich white people praying to God about their dog's bad leg, or delivering an outlandish love song ("I love you like a gay geneticist loves deiginer jeans/I need you like New Orleans needs a drought/like Hitler's father needed to learn to pull out"). His elaboratly spun lyrics contain so many puns and multi-levelled wordplay, and are so rammed with both high brow and pop culture allusions, that you can be halfway through the next verse before your mouth drops open with the brilliance of a line or a sequence of piggy-backing jokes.
His material has been known to cause offence (presumably more in his native US, although there has been at least one fringe walkout) thanks to his no holds barred approach – Nazis, racial differences and the idiocy of religion are touchstones. But Burnham is also clearly extremely self-analytical, and happy to be the first to pour the scorn back on himself. One track sees him lambast the fact that "this show has a budget; people with lanyards will judge it", and points out with brutal honesty that a family of four could have been housed with the money he wasted on giving himself a chance to show off. Comparing actors and comics to a bratty kid who shouts at a party to get attention, he finishes by hoping that maybe he'll grow out of it. Well, thank you for the self-awareness – it's uncomfortable and invigorating – but please, don't grow up too fast Bo. This is attention seeking of the highest order.
Bo Burnham: Words, Words, Words is at the Pleasance Dome at 9:35pm until the 29th August.
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