Jack Rooke @ Underbelly Bristo Square
Jack Rooke reprises his debut show Good Grief a decade on, and appraises the changes in his life and the wider world in the intervening years
Everything has changed for Jack Rooke since his comedy-theatre debut Good Grief in 2015. Back then, Rooke was 21, fresh out of university, and bringing a show about losing his dad at 15 to a small room at Underbelly. Now, as he brings the same show back to the Underbelly, it’s at one of the festival’s most prestigious theatres – the McEwan Hall. The 11 years since have brought a Radio 4 special, a memoir, a BBC Three documentary, and three series of beloved sitcom Big Boys (which netted Rooke a BAFTA).
In this retrospective, we get that full debut hour, bookended by Rooke’s reflections on a life (and industry) changed drastically since that debut. In the revived show, largely preserved as-was, Rooke tells the story of his bereavement, plays footage of recorded interviews with his beloved nan, and feeds audience members from an on-stage coffin. It’s a heavy show, and one that still packs a series of emotional punches, but it’s a joy seeing Rooke perform it. Here’s a performer that oozes comfort and charm, and clear evidence of why the world went nuts for Rooke 11 years ago.
Those bookends carry more than the usual ‘a night with’ appraisals of the earlier work (“a very weird, sweet little hour”; “quite Adrian Mole”). But the meat is in Rooke’s quietly furious appraisal of the decline in arts funding for working class people since 2015, “a time when we hadn’t completely given up the arts to children of the people responsible for the Iraq war”.
Neither Good Grief nor Big Boys, Rooke says, would have existed without grants and funding streams that have since been cut. The result is that we’ve “lost a whole generation of comedians and artists who just can’t afford it,” “enabling an ever-widening gap” in access and turning the arts into “a game for only those who can afford to play it”. As the Fringe casts about for its next Jack Rooke, it’s a sobering reminder that the next Rooke is probably sitting at home.
Jack Rooke: Good Grief, Underbelly Bristo Sq (McEwan Hall), until 29 Aug, 7pm, £19.50-£26.50