Standup show or book tie-in? Jokes Jokes Jokes is a bit of both, a panorama of Jenny Eclair’s 65 years on Earth based on her autobiography of last year. It has only chronology to bind it together, which is fine for a book but can leave a stage show feeling – well, a bit lacking. But any deficit of focus or argument is made up by the tremendous carefree vim our host brings to her task. Jokes both good and crude are delivered with a gleeful cackle and a capering lap of (usually dis-)honour, arms aloft, from one side of the stage to the other.
She deserves to celebrate: the show traces the career of a real trouper, who’s faced down adversity, her own ego, sexism and the menopause, and always found a way to keep cheerfully telling the tales. It opens in 1960 (“just think series 4 of Call the Midwife …”), when Eclair, as she then wasn’t, was born to a mum disabled by polio and a dad who may have been a spy. From the off, she sought fame; “Jenny Eclair” is what she named the “showbiz tapeworm” burrowing away inside her. But fame – via anorexia (after being branded “too fat” at drama school) and performance poetry – was neither easily found nor easily held on to.
Eclair is endearingly frank about her foibles here, and keeps the Grumpy Old Woman shtick – those cliches of decrepitude to the fore on her last tour – in check. OK, so there’s abundant “aren’t I awful?” sexual and scatalogical candour (“labia like spaniel’s ears, darling!”). There are also several robust set-pieces, like the routine that begins “every decade [of one’s life] needs its own survival kit”, and one comparing public peeing in one’s 50s as opposed to one’s 20s. Alongside those identifiably standup moments are heartfelt autobiographical scenes, like the vivid anecdote about feeling peckish at her mother’s deathbed.
The show doesn’t so much end as stop; Eclair’s life is still in-progress, after all. You could wish for a more artfully constructed show – but you’ll leave looking forward to the life story’s next instalment.
