Tour blurb:
"Hot off the heels of his critically acclaimed Netflix special, David Letterman appearance, and role on Life & Beth with Amy Schumer, Phil Wang is bringing a brand new stand-up show to venues nationwide. He's chatting race, family, nipples, and everything else that's been going on in his Philly little life."
I didn't think I was racist. Okay, before the gig, we did go to a Chinese restaurant for dinner, possibly not a coincidence. And I did notice a few more Chinese people than usual in the audience. Then I discovered I'd confused Pierre Novellie (Phil's support act) with Marcel Lucont, thinking he was 'that' French comedian when in fact he's South African. I'm now hanging my head in shame.
Pierre was drily funny, even with his frequent use of the word wet. As a support act, he was good but I'm not sure I could tolerate a whole hour of his material. His pacing is so steady he could be used as a beta blocker for excitable lovebirds.
Phil Wang is a slick comedian. He knows how to construct jokes, with toppers and callbacks, and how to make them flow. He's played the US talk shows and you can hear it in his delivery. He's mostly a safe comedian, rarely treading on anything edgy (though he did admit he liked ten-year-old girls...when he was ten).
He lost me tonight though when he claimed, in this country, the most Ibuprofen you can buy in one transaction is 32 tablets. He made a big deal about it, relating it to his experience in the States where the smallest pack size available in their pharmacy was 1000. He joked he wanted to end his headache, not his life. I wanted to heckle, "We sell packs of ninety-six in Boots," but that would have spoiled the entire joke. And I didn't want to be branded a racist for heckling a half-Chinese comedian when I don't heckle other non-half-Chinese comedians. Pedantry is often confused with racism.
The couple in front of me had an interesting dynamic. They missed the support act arriving during the interval clutching their drinks. During the show, she found Phil Wang hysterical, laughing so hard she had to throw her head back onto the back of the seat, even snorting with laughter a couple of times. Regularly she would turn to her boyfriend to check that he found it equally funny. I noticed the more she did this, the more he began to exaggerate his laughter to match her energy. His laughter got louder and his shoulders shook more. He would turn to her and she would smile, pleased they were so in tune with each other. And then I wondered if he did the same during sex. If she was wild and expressive, did he become louder and more expressive too? If she orgasmed like Lulu's opening bars to Shout, did he scream 'yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah'?
And then I realised I'm just as pervy as Phil (I do, however, draw the line at stating my penis length in print. As an author, I have no desire to fact-check such information and have never used a 3 m-long tape measure to find out. A ruler sufficed, though what the Queen's mouth was in inches, I'll never know now).
Ticket Price: £23.50 (x2) plus booking fee £5.80, transaction fee £2.80 (via ATG).
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| Possibly the worst result available from the backdrop puggy |
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