Phil Wang @ King's Theatre, Glasgow
Wry observations treated with an understated physicality means Phil Wang's onto a winner with this new hour
With mixed Malaysian and British heritage, Phil Wang has the benefit of an outsider’s perspective on British absurdities – the peculiar attachment to touching wood and the national terror about reheating rice among them – but his imperturbable demeanour also feels very British; blandly benign but rather cross about the weather and petrol prices.
Wang’s physical comedy is irresistible; low-key but artful. He holds his torso and arms slightly stiff, with a touch of the robotic, and there’s an occasional full-face scrunch (when pleading with his faulty memory to supply a forgotten name, for example). With his mop of hair and oversized glasses, it’s a physicality that is part overgrown child and part stolid bloke, and key to his understated but hugely funny persona.
That man-child quality comes to the fore in an extended gag about early fears of being a ‘pervy guy’, his 10-year-old self lusting after Disney foxes. It’s a worry that continues, but he’s matter of fact about his love of porn (still rather than moving), and characteristically quizzical about the fuss around nipples. A story about his lack of furniture, with him watching TV while perched like a Sim on a dining room chair, is all the funnier for the way it subtly chimes with his physicality.
He skims seriousness here and there: touching upon political scaremongering in the UK and abroad by criticising Tory narratives about immigration and highlighting US exhortations to stay alert to human trafficking, for example. Both are punctured by that comically peeved tone – a kind of skillful ordinariness he applies with ease. But Phil Wang doesn’t really do themes or depth; it’s finely judged silliness that he aspires to, and with an audience lost to helpless giggling, it’s an approach that clearly works.
Reviewed on 2 April at King's Theatre, Glasgow as part of Glasgow International Comedy Festival
Phil Wang: Wang In There Baby!, touring the UK including Whitehall Theatre, Dundee, 5 May, and Queen's Hall, Edinburgh, 6 May
Follow Phil on Twitter @PhilNWang | Insta: @wangpix