Jerry Sadowitz, Eventim Apollo review - brilliantly dark

If anyone in the audience at the Eventim Apollo was expecting Jerry Sadowitz to rein things in after the spot of bother he ran into at the Edinburgh Fringe in August, then they were quickly disabused.

The Pleasance had cancelled the second of two planned shows of his latest show Not For Anyone at the festival after complaints by venue staff about the comic exposing his penis during one gag and the use of the P-word to describe the man who has become our new Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak.

No Sadowitz member on display at the Apollo – playing the biggest venue if his career – but plenty appearances of the P-word about the PM again, and lashings of the often brilliant dark comedy that discomforts as much as it entertains. Sadowitz is playing a role – a misanthrope who lands punches on everyone, women, men, straights and gays, any number of people – and when we're comfortable he's in character we can laugh along because we're in on the joke. 

There are stickier moments when he attacks the BBC, describes Covid as "flu with a dash of angina", or talks about the global cabal working to hand world domination to China and one begins to think the mask has dropped and Sadowitz may be just a teensy-weensy bit unhinged. But sanity is restored with his repeated suggestion that we send arms to Ukraine “so Russia can finish the job”; it's clearly a clever construct to unsettle any wet-the-bed liberals in the audience.  

There's a slew of comics Sadowitz would erase out of existence – and a wonderfully surreal section describes how he would, Pied Piper-like, do that, leaving only John Bishop alive to tell the tale – and there's some fun to be had guessing which popular comics will get the “fucking wanker” appellation next. By my count (and I was barely keeping up) the list included Michael McIntyre, Peter Kay, Russell Howard and Frankie Boyle, with a few more for good measure.

Sadowitz is a delightfully sweary comic – the “fuck” and “cunt” count is stratospheric – and his energy level throughout 100 minutes is astonishing, with the sheer venom he shows for humanity breathtaking. But there's nobody he hates more than he hates himself, and so we can cut him some slack. Yet there are limits – for me, “jokes” about Madeleine McCann; for others, I'm sure his views on Black Lives Matter or the LGBT alphabet soup would not amuse.

He does a few card tricks – wasted on anyone beyond the first few rows in such a large venue, as he admitted – but runs through several magic gags using a table-full of props before finishing the show as Rabbi Burns, with some clever gags in the form of short poems. It's a bracing evening with the belly laughs far outnumbering the shocked groans.

• Jerry Sadowitz is touring until 14 December
•  More comedy reviews on theartsdesk