“They’re just jokes – I’m not even gay!”
Scott Capurro greets “all my imaginary friends in the front row” as he skips onstage at The Bill Murray. The front row is conspicuously empty – who after all would be so foolish as to sit there? But there’s no escape later in the set when he begins to interact with members of the audience. Before long a man who came out at the age of 30 is describing his sexual preferences and a woman is showing us her neat caesarean scar.
First though, we are congratulated on our diversity as an audience – “every shade of white from vanilla to ecru!” Capurro riffs on racist relatives, being American, his marriage to a Brazilian, Brexit, Trump supporters (“stupider people live further from the sea in America – perhaps it’s dehydration”) and of course Trump himself: “an orange oompah-loompah in a cancer wig”.
He moves onto Grenfell – “brace yourselves!” Every time there is an audible gasp from the audience he offers a gracious “thank you” in return.
As a comic provocateur, Capurro seeks to probe his audience’s soft spots and he is very funny with it. He delights in skewering liberal hypocrisies and, unlike other comedians, he targets Muslims. “I can’t make fun of Christians and Jews and not Muslims. That would be racist!”
After more than an hour, nobody walks out. Tongue in cheek, he thanks us all for still being there – perhaps he is disappointed?
The Trouble With Scott Capurro ran for three nights from Tuesday 15 to Thursday 17 August at The Bill Murray in Islington as part of the Camden Fringe Festival 2017.