In the Ricky Gervais universe, no subject is unsuitable for the comedic water cooler. Not fat people. Not sexual abuse. Not religion. Not terrorism.
“It’s all contextual,” insisted the 49-year-old actor, writer and, more recently, stand-up comic near the end of a show that went down well at the Chicago Theatre Wednesday night, engaging in a little self-rationalization. “Comedy comes from either a good or a bad place.”
The implication was that Gervais’ own comedy — outrageous as it may be in its content — comes from that good moral place. And, assuming you take a rational, secular view of the universe and have a healthy affinity for the English love of knocking down the pretensions of others (if not the pretensions of yourself), you likely will share that view. Comedy, Gervais noted at one point, before launching into a routine involving dirty jokes and octogenarians, is the way we find out whether or not we are in the presence of the like-minded. It is a greeting, a mating call, a check. Gervais, who seems both supremely confident and somewhat diffident, lobs out material provocatively, as if he is perpetually unsure whether the room is cool, or whether he has finally gone too far. It is intoxicating, not least because it’s suffused with self-exploration.
The mere fact that Gervais spent so much time discussing the nature and meta-morality of comedy — betwixt gags about the sex lives of animals — reveals a lot. It suggested the quest of a very successful but clearly restless man (“The Office,” which he co-created and starred in, became one of the most successful British entertainment exports of all time) to find a less absurdist narrative with which he can now be comfortable.
Gervais is one of a rapidly propagating breed of self-aware, well-educated, middle-age comedians — many of whom arrived at comedy through acting and writing — whose age and intellect render them, thank God, uninterested in dispensing gags about relationships or the other trivialities of the unexamined life. Gervais would rather take on, say, the inherent illogicalities of creationism. In some ways, he’s like a deconstructed Glenn Beck. Only British and thus armed with irony instead of tears. And operating in reverse.
Like Eddie Izzard, the peer whom he most resembles with this new show (it’s being filmed in Chicago this week for an HBO special), Gervais constantly chases after the big thematic kahuna (Izzard also likes to go after the absurdities of a literal interpretation of Noah’s Ark). A less experienced stand-up, Gervais has less of a naturally zany and arty riff. But while the noir-clad Gervais — who has lost a good deal of weight — may not be dressed to kill, he is edgier and more willing to dance on a knife-edge. He’s like one of those guys who goes to a dinner party, promptly gets bored and decides to test just how much outrage his fellow guests can take. You wish he’d go yet deeper in places and maybe take on a few more targets that, unlike Noah, still have their fangs. But great comic writers invariably have a self-destructive impulse, leavened with ambition. You can take the boy out of England, but you can’t take that out of the boy.
cjones5@tribune.com
When: Through 8 p.m. Friday
Where: Chicago Theatre, 175 N. State St.
Tickets: $39.50-$50 (ages 18+) at 800-745-3000 and ticketmaster.com
