Bearded, silver-haired and playing in much smaller rooms than the theatres he performed in for years, you could be forgiven for thinking that the now 52-year-old Dave Hughes is taking stock and wants to return to his club comic roots. Perhaps an unplugged version of his usual livewire act, a gear change from his usual ‘my family are driving me mad!’ schtick, something more nuanced or unguarded perhaps.
Not so much. Hughesy is as Hughesy does and this offering will not disappoint or alienate anyone who came for rants about Uber Eats, road works in the CBD or those crazy Covid restrictions. And as low-hanging as such topics might be, Hughes’ finely-tuned ‘angry everyman’ energy rarely fails to deliver decent laughs.
Hughes’ gift is being able to make considered and well-structured stories sound like they’re being told for the first time by the funniest bloke down the pub, as well as demonstrating a constant, crippling need for self-validation and seeming baffled when people laugh at this.
Wanting to be recognised by everyone you meet is a deeply weird ambition to share - jokingly or not - but Hughes does a remarkable job of occupying a liminal space between household-name celebrity and relatable normality. For example, his alleged horror when nobody in his crowd admits to watching The Masked Singer (easily the best moment of the show) is quickly followed by him slagging it off and getting in on the joke with everyone else.
Some early material on the recent deaths of his pets (which have clearly had an emotional impact) hints at a more interesting, vulnerable offering but this isn't built upon. Meanwhile, the inevitable whinging about his objectively enviable home life rarely gets out of first gear, not helped by how well-worn the path is (one bit must be half a decade old) and how downright mean it can sometimes be, which your mileage may vary on. There are also some riffs on the royal family, being clueless about what pegging is and taking up vaping as a mid-life crisis crutch, all given the wide-eyed Hughesy treatment, but none of which are elevated beyond the ordinary.
To be fair, we have no right to expect Hughes to change a successful formula, and it’s not as if he was a particularly edgy comic to begin with. Still, given his exceptional skills it would be exciting to see him venture beyond his own front porch a little more. For now, he continues to provide a dependably enjoyable hour of straight-up stand-up, like slipping on a pair of comfy slippers. We’re a great crowd who knows what it’s in for and we should never forget that. Good on him.