Review: An Evening With Jack Dee – Tyne Theatre, Newcastle
Jack Dee
So what? This is the apathetic response that Jack Dee advocates should be used more in response to text messages, Facebook posts, marriage proposals. You wouldn’t expect anything else from Dee, who’s into his third decade of delivering his brand of misery – and that’s exactly what you get.
The first half is a little fragmented, with some sort of structure kicking in shortly before the interval, when the routines are grounded by the days of the week.
Some topics feel very familiar, such as taxi drivers’ penchant for putting the world to rights. And while Dee’s teasing of the host towns in I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue is successful in its specificity, it’s quite clearly transferable to the stage. One can easily imagine the jokes being delivered here in Newcastle – at the expense Gateshead and Byker – also being delivered in Manchester at the expense of Liverpool and Moss Side. It does the trick as a crowd pleaser, but the genericity is perhaps a little unimaginative.
I don’t think that it would spoil anything to mention that the encore incorporates a change of form for Dee. The satisfying conclusion is sort of a combination of John Hegley, Otis Lee Crenshaw and, more obscurely, the twee indie band Jam on Bread. It’s a reassuringly unexpected note on which to end.
Tonight Dee delivers a model performance. It just seems a little too modelled for my liking.
Date of live review: Saturday 24th November 2012
