Review: Andy Parsons, Live and Unleashed – but Naturally Cautious

Mock the Week regular and contributor to puppet satire Spitting Image, Andy Parsons sold out his set at Warwick Arts Centre in February. On this occasion though, the comedian was less lucky with the smaller audience in the Royal Spa Centre for ‘Live and Unleashed – but Naturally Cautious’. Thankfully the initially frosty crowd was soon won over by Parsons’ conversational style. Unafraid to take a pop at anything silly in the personal and the political, Parsons’ informed satire has the audience thinking and laughing all evening.

Live and Unleashed is a show of two very different halves. Parsons begins by contemplating his hang ups about aging, masculinity, death. He’s pretty terrible at being a man, he says. He’s afraid of heights. All in all, he’s a bit of a shambles. We don’t mind, because so are we.

We veer into the dark, into existential angst, by the interval. The veneer of the larger than life comedian bounding onto the stage with a scissor kick and a belly laugh is replaced by a man sat at the back of the stage considering the futility of being.

When Parsons returns post-interval, what follows is the cutting politics we recognise from Mock the Week. No politician or party is safe. Carefully blended into irreverent comments about BOGOF offers and British values, this is reasoned satire for the Everyman. The woman next to me “Mmmm”s at every new political statement, as Parsons reasons his views with us without aloofness. He knows how to engage his audience in political debate, whilst reassuring us that he knows just as little as we do.

As the evening ends and we’re asked to hold hands with our neighbours, the very British audience dissolves into an awkward mess. On the way out, there are snippets of political debate to be heard all around the auditorium. Nicely done, Parsons.