Alfie Brown – The Revolting Youth

“Subjectivity is a beautiful thing,” sighs Alfie Brown, responding as his latest hard-hitting punchline only prompts a few cackles from the back of the room. He shrugs, umms, and tries a different routine. This gets a better reaction, after which he stops, shakes his head disapprovingly, and carries on. It’s almost as if he’s forgotten his own aphorism.

Brown is being hailed as one of the new generation of British stand-ups. He’s an angry, disaffected and dissatisfied young man rebelling against pop culture’s inherent commercialisation of everything, and the way we commodify sexuality, gender and even youth itself. His material does contain some thought provoking ideas which by their very nature veer towards controversy – this in itself isn’t a problem, and indeed it’s easy to side with his world view on a number of occasions. The problem here is that Brown sees them as tools to antagonise an audience – waiting for a reaction and then challenging that feedback, rather than letting the routine speak for itself. His confidence on stage comes across as arrogance much of the time, and an ill advised rant bemoaning how much it’s costing him to be here gets little sympathy from his paying audience.

There’s promise here, certainly, but Brown needs to figure out how to deliver this kind of material and leave the attitiude at home.