Sharp-edged brilliance defines John Kearns' latest show, Tilting at Windmills, a poignant and hilarious riff on T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. Performed at The Crescent in York, the comedian addresses a relationship breakup via high literary culture, Aldi, and a dimwit estate agent.
The Premise: A Modern Waste Land
How has it come to this? That is the question Kearns asks in Tilting at Windmills, echoing T.S. Eliot's modernist masterpiece. After the end of a 12-year relationship with the mother of his son, the 39-year-old finds himself angrier than usual and unmoored. He flat-hunts pessimistically while living with his parents, roaming south London after fleeing a disappointing walking tour based on Eliot's verse.
Sound clips of Alec Guinness reading The Waste Land punctuate the show, infusing it with awe at life's ineffable mysteries and bathos from the contrast between high culture and Kearns' humdrum realities. He shops in Aldi with his mum, stands naked under a dripping shower, and recalls an awkward teenage meeting with then-PM Tony Blair, who attended his school play.
Fragments and Ferocity
Under Jon Brittain's direction, the show unfolds in Eliot-like fragments. Kearns bounces between existential musings (an encounter with ventriloquist Nina Conti leads him to wonder, “am I my own puppet?!”) and sadness over his shattered domestic dreams. He does not overshare, but his real feelings are woven obliquely into this tapestry of a Streatham clown adrift. They remain palpable, especially in the surprising ferocity he brings to dialogues with dimwit estate agent Connor and two poetry scholars in a pub over an illicit packet of prawn cocktail crisps.
The sharp edges and sense of real hurt beneath the very funny gags about Kearns' limited commercial reach may forestall hilarity, but there is no resisting the care, craft, and beautifully turned phrases of a comic who “feels like he's being CC'ed into his own life.” At its best, this show about The Waste Land aspires to wonderstruck, workaday poetry.
Touring to 6 November.
