Adrian Reynolds got down to the Nottingham Arts Theatre to catch controversial comedian, Jerry Sadowitz, do his thing...
From the moment he comes on stage to an audience that just about fills a third of the Arts Theatre, Jerry Sadowitz is less a comedian in any comprehensible form than some kind of force of nature. A thunderstorm of bile, a salvo of toxic epithets, a trigger warning in physical form, there are times, as he glowers and rages, that he looks less like a human being than a malevolent puppet from a horror film you’re not sure you saw on a screen or in a nightmare.
Make no mistake, Sadowitz is offensive. Monstrously and gleefully and often hilariously so. It’s easy to see why he’s not been on TV for decades. He’s clearly a viewer though, skewering Michael McIntyre, Stephen Fry, and Victoria Wood among others. Oh, and Dynamo gets a roasting on several occasions, not least because Sadowitz is a close-up magician of rare skill, and finds Dynamo’s contrivances as lamentable as his name.
It would be simple to view Sadowitz’s act as a hate crime, but I think that misses what’s going on. His fluid and breakneck misanthropy is so all-encompassing that to take it personally would be ludicrous, though there’s plenty of scope to do so if that’s what you wish. Actually, that’s the easy option. Stay with him as he does his rollercoaster through Hades thing and you might, as I do, suspect he’s closer to writer William Burroughs or painter Francis Bacon – someone who renders what he witnesses in uncompromisingly stark terms, and absolutely will not hold back.
I went to the show not at all convinced I was in the mood for it. A long time ago, I’d seen Jerry perform at Glastonbury, where maybe twenty people left the show in disgust at various points. That night, heavyhearted after a former lover shared news of her young daughter’s life-threatening illness, I howled with laughter as Sadowitz riffed on the theme of cancer and celebrated death. There’s a kind of scouring effect to his relentlessly bleak offerings, like when boats have barnacles blasted off them with high-pressure hoses.
Make no mistake, Sadowitz is not for everyone. I can fully understand why people think he’s a racist and misogynist and whatever else. All of that makes sense. And yet… there’s a case for confronting the power of hatred and loathing, and if you’re up for that, Jerry will take you by the hand – or throat – and drag you through it, and bring you back more or less in one piece. And some of the tears in your eyes will be from laughing.
Jerry Sadowitz was at Nottingham Arts Theatre on Thursday 10 October 2016.
Jerry Sadowitz website
Adrian Reynolds website
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