★★★ London Is Funny - Tuesday, August 20th, 2013
Baconface is a Canadian comic with a Mexican wrestling mask on which is draped in bacon, which occasionally falls off or flops in front of his face. The bacon a scene-stealer. I see Baconface as a sort of anti-heroic comic book character , quite possibly because he has taken his own style of comedy about as far as it can go for satirical purposes.
Baconface is a bitter, unsuccessful comic who did everything first but got no credit.
The techniques Baconface employs are repetition (in his responses to a seventh day adventist), deconstruction (analysing how he came to use Margaret Atwood as a reference) and bloody-minded self-commentary (explaining that he won’t be updating any of his Canadian references for the Edinburgh crowd, and happily picking up fallen bits of bacon to re-drape).
Anyway, the gig. I enjoyed it in fits and starts. I love the grizzled comedian desperately trying to entertain people despite being pathologically unable to suppress his own resentment more than the actual routines. Such as his poking fun at north American comics for having no stamina or pointing out that the “switcheroo” or some other comic device was pioneered by him in some obscure Canadian club in 1983.
“There’s no credit for being an innovator in this game.” he repeats, as much a catchphrase as his official one, “it’s all bacon!” which is delivered very much without the exclamation mark.
His opening routine about winding up the Seventh-day Adventist on his doorstep gets a bit tiresome but I enjoyed his closing routine about encountering a bear on a hiking trip that shows a knack for timing and pacing a story. My favourite line of the whole show being the incidental “and with no real enthusiasm…”
I’d be up for second helpings.
3 stars