Richard Gadd interview: Gaddot Arrives
Returning home for the Glasgow International Comedy Festival, the wait is finally over for punk prince of comedy Richard Gadd.
A civilised bakery in north London is the last place you’d expect iconoclastic comic Richard Gadd to suggest as a meeting point. The last time we saw him eat baked goods, he was stuffing an entire cake in his mouth before spraying crumbs over the front row as he wailed about a lost love in his breakout show Cheese and Crackwhores.
Yet here we are, and while we’re – ahem – waiting for gateau, we talk Waiting For Gaddot – the show that slayed Edinburgh last summer and is set to have a one night stand at the Glasgow International Comedy Festival.
A litter of critics named the show their pick of the Fringe, though few could describe it without giving away what does and doesn’t happen. Let’s just say it lives up to its title and somehow manages to find a fifth wall to break as it mashes together comedy, theatre, video and performance art.
“I’m not a comedian in the classic sense,” explains Gadd. “I look at a Raymond Mearns or a Paul Sneddon and can’t believe how well they can spin a yarn. I don’t think I can stand up and tell a story; I haven’t written an anecdote or a joke in my life. What I do is high concept theatrics; big ideas; in-your-face, smash-mouth comedy.”
Avant-garde and extreme then, but Gadd never forgets to be funny with it. The Fife-born comedian is only 25 but has performed at the Fringe for seven years in a row, steadily building his understanding of what audiences will put up with and how disorienting and dark he can go.
And then he goes just beyond that. So expect gimp outfits, blood-spattered punch-ups, drugs, sexual depravity, Oedipal grumblings, puns, pain and anger. Catharsis is the aim – and if that means wrenching people out of their comfort zone, so be it.
Mental health and comedy
Gadd confesses to a medicine cabinet’s worth of issues: insomnia, anxiety, depression. “I am very honest about my life on stage. It’s natural to be terrified of things but if you tackle these uncomfortable zones you become stronger as a person. I’m scared of things but I never let the fear govern me.
“I think mental health in this country is a big stigma and a lot of people are scared to admit that. Mental health is a hard thing to judge because it’s not a physical impairment and a lot are scared of saying they have depression or anxiety so they suffer in silence. So if I can come out on stage and say I suffer from these or have idiosyncracies and neuroticism that affect me, and if someone sees the show and says, 'Oh, I feel like that too,' then I feel like I’ve done my job.”
And the insomnia? “I’m 25, but I look way older and I think that’s because of my problems sleeping. I’ve aged through sleep anxiety. I try everything, but mainly just lie there waiting for it to pass. This morning I woke up at four like a bull had barged into my room – the adrenaline came for me.”
During the Fringe it’s exacerbated, he says: “Some nights I don’t sleep at all. Gaddot was the worst: I lost a lot of weight because there was so much pressure on the show. There were reviewers and judges in every night because of the buzz it got.”
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So the obvious question then is: why do it? “I ask myself that question every day. I think when it goes well there’s no feeling in the world like it. Gaddot has been such a whirlwind of fun and success that I think I’ll look back on it as one of the best experiences of my life.”
Despite the personal satisfaction this eventually brings, Gadd still has a lot to get off his chest.
“Sometimes comedy and the competitive nature of it gives way to a natural bitterness and pessimism and I try my hardest to not give in to that. But it’s hard when a sneezing panda is more famous than most comedians in this country…"
Gadd's work is fizzing with fury and, leaving the sneezing panda to one side, his main target is the comedy world itself.
Richard Gadd on politial correctness and controversy
“Comedy was rock n roll and now it’s pop. I think comedy is in a crisis point right now. The internet has taken over from television and the scene is suffering because now there are so many outlets. We’re so overpopulated with Vines and Tweets, all this instant gratification, that a lot of comedy has become quite wearisome. I like to think I always approach it in a way that brings back some of the anarchy that has existed over the years. I might not do it as well as the peers from yesteryear, but I try to keep hold of that idea.
“I look back at someone like Richard Pryor and some of the stuff he would talk about on stage: getting set on fire, trying to kill himself, being assaulted and abused. He wouldn’t be allowed on television these days and if he was born now we’d be starved of his comedy talent.”
He hits his stride here: “We’re in an age of political correctness, which is the right thing and I do agree with it, but it’s almost a religion now where everyone is so afraid of offending anyone. But I think you need to test boundaries because when you test them you raise thoughts that make the audience think and therefore you can enact social change. We’re in an age now of box-ticking and not offending to the point of insanity.”
And he’s not done there: “As a culture, Britain is in dire straits right now: there’s mass paranoia, the rise of the internet, dislocation and postmodern depression, but I don’t feel like any of that is reflected in comedy. Controversy has become a bad word but in my opinion controversy just means having a polemical argument that makes people think and makes people talk. And I think comedy has, to some degree, lost that down the years.”
Gadd’s next mission is a full frontal assault on television. Not too many people know that the video clips in Waiting For Gaddot are actually excerpts from a sitcom pilot he’s hoping to make soon, the cast including Lesley Joseph, Ricky Grover, Catherine Drysdale and Leila Hoffman. It will retain the input of Gadd’s long term collaborator Gary Reich (the director-producer who also nurtured The Mighty Boosh, Sacha Baron Cohen and Kim Noble). And whatever kind of coup de telly they have in mind, it’ll surely be worth waiting for.
Richard Gadd: Waiting For Gaddot, The Stand, Woodlands Rd, Glasgow, Sun 13 Mar, 5pm, £8/£7.