Alasdair Beckett-King: The Interdimensional ABK
I first came across Alasdair Beckett-King years ago, way down the bill at a comedy night at the Diss Rugby Club, of all places. He was the undoubted highlight of the evening, while I have long since forgotten who the headliner was. I mention it only to gainsay the idea that his elevation to headline status has come about solely through his excellent YouTube parodies that he is perhaps best known for. Like so many other overnight success stories, Beckett-King has been grafting away on the comedy circuit for years, carving out a comedy career on a case by case basis. Comedy is not a business governed entirely by meritocracy, so it's a genuine pleasure to see such a talented fellow getting the recognition he deserves.
In those days he was still doing his impression of John the Baptist, but I suppose the zeitgeist has now moved on from the beheading of Christian martyrs. Nonetheless, there were still fragments of his old routine in the warm up to this show, not least his recasting of William Blake's Proverbs of Hell - a body of work I can say with confidence has rarely been the source material for stand-up comedy. Beckett-King seemed very much at ease from the outset - perhaps because he is still fairly up and coming himself and has form on warming up an audience. In any event, an extended monologue about being ginger was interspersed with warm and inclusive chat, at one point stopping the show so a late comer could take their coat off and get comfy. His audience were both animated and engaged, happily joining in when invited.
"I've never had that question answered before," said a surprised comedian, when asking for the Doppler effect to be identified. "Here it was half the room that answered."
It all made for a jolly half an hour before the break, after which the audience, properly warmed up, settled down for the proper show, for which he went inter-dimensional. We knew this as things kicked off with a rather marvellous animated film of his alter ego, ABK, flying through the sky while doing all manner of inter-dimensional things. Thereafter, visual gags were kept to a minimum, and this was probably the right decision. Notwithstanding the brilliant mini epics he regularly posts this was a live show, and connecting with an audience was obviously important to him.
The central premise of his routine was the idea that he had moved, through a wibbly wobbly vortex, from a dimension where entropy works in reverse, and therefore from chaos to order. This was illustrated by all manner of whimsy, but in the main was a peg to hang his observations about the world we live in. To that extent, he sneaked a fair amount of relatively standard stand-up material, albeit glossed over with the patina of weirdness.
An extended routine examining the pitfalls of using the loo on the train was presented as a contrast to the toilets in his own universe and was very funny, but it was material I could imagine any number of mainstream comedians delivering. While his occasional appearances on the likes of Mock the Week are clearly going to garner a wider audience, I do hope that doesn't tempt him to stray too close to normality.
This is a minor quibble, however, and if I dwell less on the general hilarity of the evening, it’s only because I am loath to spoil the many delightful twists and turns he has in store. As a teaser, I had a lot of time for the Nazi dinosaurs, the edited highlights from Hamlet, and the sublime Star Trek re-enactment that had the whole audience literally reeling. Beckett-King is the rarest of things, a true original. His act is the perfect marriage of meticulous construction and flights of fancy. The closest I can come to describing him succinctly is a crossbreed between Stuart Lee and Eddie Izzard. Who would have thought such a thing could even be imagined?
