“You pay money I be funny?” There are times in stand-up when it seems the wrong kind of transaction has taken place. A comedian brings a warped vision of the world to a paying public. He – and the weirder ones are always a he – parade neurosis, dysfunction and fixation that, in the normal scheme of things, they really ought to be working through every week with a psychotherapeutic professional at whatever the hourly rate over however many years. But if you fixed the warp, you’d kill the laughter. So yes, as Hans Teeuwen summed up neatly in the voice of a Filipino table dancer, we pay money he be funny. And forget the shrink.
Forget also the hunt for an underlying theme. Teeuwen is Dutch but doesn’t make a big thing of it like Henning Wehn, currently touring with his German Humour Goes Global show. There was a moment where he was trying to pick volunteers – from a predictably reluctant audience – and rejected a couple of compatriots from the front row. Sometimes he ramped up the accent for comic effect – when obsessive-compulsively rolling the word “Jew” round his mouth, for example, in an interlude about global religions. "It's such a pity there's no God," he riffed. "I mean especially for religious people."
This was a rare moment of baring his teeth and adopting a moral position. (There was another very funny one about the ethical condescension of those who claim to love world music.) For the most part Teeuwen offers a disjointed joy ride round his subconscious, like a guided tour of a disused mine. Here was the imaginary forest where animals interact with one another, there the man who can’t get his dog to sit, and round this corner is Teeuwen’s suppressed desire to clean an entire plane. There was compelling evidence of a severe anal fixation, of someone who has yet to survive the trauma of potty training.
One of the pleasures of Teeuwen’s shtick is the unquestioning acceptance of his own weirdness, like a child who has yet to learn to internalise imaginative impulses. In one mostly physical routine, he subjected his tall wiry besuited frame to a series of wracked contortions while emitting guttural nonsense noises. Then suddenly he snapped out of it with a casual, “So yeah, there’s loads of stuff you can do.” He rejigged Michael Jackson songs like a child freaking (himself) out in the mirror.
At other times Teeuwen was the adult figure, entertaining his audience like a parent adlibbing random narratives for a four-year-old - but a parent, it should be added, who is hell-bent on fulfilling the Larkinesque contract about mums and dads. The boy at bedtime who was terrified of Jaws had his fears logically deconstructed, and was advised to worry less about sharks than about child molesters. In an audience-friendly parody of a children’s entertainment, Teeuwen enacted a puppet show using just his hands. Its characters were a pair of leering sex maniacs who eyed up the pretty helpers holding up the cloth which concealed the performer.
Now and then Teeuwen took to the piano to bash out sick songs about sex, the climactic one a hymn to the private parts using, of course, the saltiest word in the lexicon. By the end of the evening he had skilfully persuaded (almost) all the females in the audience to serenade him with the words, “I like your cock.” Whether you can love his comedy is another matter.
This was a rare moment of baring his teeth and adopting a moral position. (There was another very funny one about the ethical condescension of those who claim to love world music.) For the most part Teeuwen offers a disjointed joy ride round his subconscious, like a guided tour of a disused mine. Here was the imaginary forest where animals interact with one another, there the man who can’t get his dog to sit, and round this corner is Teeuwen’s suppressed desire to clean an entire plane. There was compelling evidence of a severe anal fixation, of someone who has yet to survive the trauma of potty training.
One of the pleasures of Teeuwen’s shtick is the unquestioning acceptance of his own weirdness, like a child who has yet to learn to internalise imaginative impulses. In one mostly physical routine, he subjected his tall wiry besuited frame to a series of wracked contortions while emitting guttural nonsense noises. Then suddenly he snapped out of it with a casual, “So yeah, there’s loads of stuff you can do.” He rejigged Michael Jackson songs like a child freaking (himself) out in the mirror.
At other times Teeuwen was the adult figure, entertaining his audience like a parent adlibbing random narratives for a four-year-old - but a parent, it should be added, who is hell-bent on fulfilling the Larkinesque contract about mums and dads. The boy at bedtime who was terrified of Jaws had his fears logically deconstructed, and was advised to worry less about sharks than about child molesters. In an audience-friendly parody of a children’s entertainment, Teeuwen enacted a puppet show using just his hands. Its characters were a pair of leering sex maniacs who eyed up the pretty helpers holding up the cloth which concealed the performer.
Now and then Teeuwen took to the piano to bash out sick songs about sex, the climactic one a hymn to the private parts using, of course, the saltiest word in the lexicon. By the end of the evening he had skilfully persuaded (almost) all the females in the audience to serenade him with the words, “I like your cock.” Whether you can love his comedy is another matter.
- Hans Teeuwen: Smooth and Painful at Soho Theatre until 3 June
- Find Hans Teeuwen on Amazon
