Colin Hoult has been performing on the fringe for 20 years, however by no means with what most comics give us in the beginning: a solo present, about himself. Now, the sketch act turned alter ego of ageing thespian Anna Mann steps out from behind the masks, with a standup set about his personal eccentric household background. It’s an hour that quietly casts its spell, as element upon element is added to a telling portrait, with a robust sense of place, of an unexceptionally tough working-class childhood. Again in 80s Nottingham, “Little Col” (named after his dad) grows up in a household with neither language nor understanding of their appreciable idiosyncrasy – or as we now understand it, neurodiversity.
First up, it’s enjoyable for Hoult-watchers to see how his personal standup persona overlaps with that of theatrical grande dame Mann. No shock there, provided that her swansong efficiency (comedy award-nominated at Edinburgh two summers in the past) confessed to the slippage between character and creator. So right here comes Colin, virtually as camp and simply as conspiratorial together with his viewers, spiriting us again to a troubled childhood within the shadow of Mapperley psychological well being hospital. Not simply bodily (his window ignored it) however psychologically: “he’s not proper”, his household mutter of Little Col, threatening him with expulsion to the previous lunatic asylum. That’s a bit wealthy: he’s not the one staging séances on Christmas Day, communing with gorillas.
Hoult’s present circles that anecdote and its dramatis personae: his brother, obsessive about a Wetherspoon’s £5 meal; his parodically pessimistic mum. However the present’s strongest presence, his dad, stays on the mayhem’s margins, “the one regular one amongst us”, the household’s lodestar. Now a father himself, Hoult reckons right here together with his distant dad – and wonders the way to dad or mum his personal youngsters as their nonconformities swim into view. Given the depth of feeling at play behind the upbeat, weren’t-we-loopy comedy, it’s odd that Col Jr undermines the emotional significance of a scene at his father’s deathbed. That’s a uncommon misstep in a vividly realised present about class, household and the nice merciful change that’s come about in how we take into account distinction from the norm.
