Forty years into his performing profession, what you’re going to get with Invoice Bailey. Musical noodling: some comedian songs, some batty instrumental experiments. Surrealist fancy. An strategy to point out building for which the phrase meandering would recommend one thing altogether too dynamic. Bailey does what he, and never what anybody else, pleases. Give or take a victorious stint on Strictly, he didn’t get the place he’s immediately by dancing to anybody’s tune however his personal.
His new providing, Thoughtifier, adjustments the method not a jot, save for the occasional cameo from opera singer Florence Hvorostovsky to beef up this nihilistic birthday track or that ditty about Henry VIII. As somebody who’s used to seeing Bailey onstage alone, it may well’t not be attention-grabbing that he’s now received a sidekick with him. However Hvorostovsky – a glamorous distinction to our wurzelly primary man – is just an intermittent presence right here, in a present that focuses on giving Bailey’s adoring crowd (on this case at Brighton Centre) what they need. That may very well be the grumpy barbs on the Tory authorities that open the present (describing Rishi Sunak as “a poorly rendered AI cardigan”), or it may very well be the cheerful acknowledgment that the majority of us are as outdated and unadventurous as Bailey is. (“Anyone know any Taylor Swift?”)
This isn’t, then, a comic book placing out into new terrain. Want or not it’s? Bailey’s final present, En Path to Regular, was his first since Covid, and the aid to be again in entrance of dwell onlookers was palpable. It was additionally his first since profitable Strictly, introducing his dwell work for the primary time to an expanded viewers. It wasn’t a positive factor that they’d prefer it. Bailey could also be one in all our biggest-name comics, a nationwide treasure no much less. However that standing wasn’t inevitable. Watch his dwell work through the years, and also you don’t see an act nailed on for fame. It’s homely, sure, and unchallenging – and typically joyfully humorous. But it surely’s additionally eccentric, from time to time crotchety, and nerdy too.
Having solely not too long ago reconnected with dwell audiences, then, and introduced a load of recent followers onboard, this won’t be the second for Bailey to modify up the shtick. However often tonight, for we long-term Invoice-watchers not less than, the familiarity (together with some same-old jokes in regards to the West Nation accent) feels a bit weary. So does Bailey himself within the first act, which finds our host getting miffed – or pretend-miffed – on the supposed unresponsiveness of the gang. There are just a few routines that land weakly right here (just like the one about nuclear fusion) and musical interludes that disappear earlier than they actually get going. However there’s additionally a really humorous riff on false experiences of Bailey’s demise on Twitter, focusing extra on the grammar than the gravity, and a treasured viewers participation sketch involving Bluetooth-enabled bouncing balls and a Phil Collins drum solo.
We’re in Bailey’s candy spot with that one, the place music occurs in an surprising manner, and silliness is fortunately overlaid. The present’s finale makes an attempt one thing related, because the 59-year-old brings out his “laser harp” for a little bit of classical/rave fusion. However, spectacular visuals apart, the connections the routine attracts between Pachelbel’s Canon and home music stay elusive, and the comedian payload refuses to detonate. Irrespective of: we’ve been amply entertained by then, by a candy comedian track about grocery store romance and a really superb one-liner about Van Halen’s track Leap. There’s additionally a faux-French quantity (revived from Bailey’s final touring present) a few boy’s relationship with a pigeon, and an operatic duet with Hvorostovsky, sending up Carmen with stoopid subtitles.
At such moments, watching Bailey play Bizet on the piano, his new companion’s voice shaking the rafters and the jokes franchised out to an upstage display screen – or later, when he wigs out for his encore, enjoying an Irish reel on a mandole – you may’t assist however wonder if he mightn’t prefer to be doing extra of this, whether or not his musical type should typically really feel cramped by the ambling, bits-and-bobs nature of his comedy. This, in any case, is a person who as soon as took the stage of the Royal Albert Corridor to carry out with the BBC Live performance Orchestra – though even then, he pottered extra typically than he lower free. Perhaps his subsequent dwell present might be an opera or oratorio of his personal, making new calls for on Bailey’s skills? Or possibly we’ll get extra amiable tinkering within the areas between music, whimsy and sound. If the latter, effectively, as he proves once more in Thoughtifier, nobody does it higher.
