Comedy review: Greg Davies, Theatre Royal, Glasgow

Published on 31/10/2012 02:13

A former teacher, best known for playing The Inbetweeners’ irritable head of sixth form, Greg Davies, at 6ft 8in, projected the imposing bearing of a natural authority figure.

Greg Davies

Theatre Royal, Glasgow

Star rating: * * * *

Yet mentally he yearned for juvenilia, never happier than suppressing a fart until maximum fallout for an unfortunate foreigner.

Although he embarrasses himself at music festivals by trying to be down with the kids, at 44 he’s disturbed that his mother has lately resumed the mantra of his boyhood, a dismissive “it’s not normal, love” for his behaviour, swiftly followed by the departing back of her head.

Crucially, Davies has never quit the playground in his appreciation of human behaviour. His anecdotes typically began with “my friend …” or regress to childhood family memories, striking a blow for the normality of weird behaviour and youthful capriciousness, invariably expressed in his seething envy of the young and their freedom.

There was a joy in his raspberry-blowing and resistance to the mundanity of responsibility. And there were murmurs of recognition when he recalled moments he’d wanted to freak out and buck convention.

The heroes of his tales were the demons in our heads that make us behave inexplicably. He contrived an unnecessarily overblown finale to hammer home his point, which sort of was the point, because this was a thoroughly entertaining show that breaks wind in the face of too much analysis.