★★★★☆
Bill Bailey’s return to the stage after jiving to victory in Strictly Come Dancing was supposed to have happened last Christmas, but then all sorts of things were supposed to have happened last Christmas. So when he opens this stand-up comeback at the Royal Opera House in London with an uncharacteristically triumphal, “Yes! This is happening! Yessss!” who can blame him? And when within seconds he references the incongruity of a West Country hippy like him sneaking his way into this citadel of high culture — will Plácido Domingo be making a reciprocal appearance at the Banana Cabaret in Balham, he asks — we know that Bailey has returned in just the kind of world’s-brainiest-innkeeper mode that he does better than anyone.
You can’t expect a man to be 100 per cent nimble on every set piece — playing hard rock anthems with hand bells, say — straight out of the box. Yet some of the best laughs here are precisely when he does commit some minor infelicity and then has the experience and imagination to have fun with it.
The set design, a Pink Floyd-like giant round screen with a vintage map on it, is the same one he has been using since 2018 on his Larks in Transit tour of travel stories and joyful musical collisions. It takes him well into his second hour to get to much travel stuff here, though. Instead he addresses the moment with talk of the weirdness of the Cabinet and, by way of balance, the dullness of Keir Starmer. And if some of the talk of lockdowns and the live comedian’s fear of irrelevance is a little 2020, there is joy to be had as Bailey walks around the stage, Eric Morecambe-style unlit pipe in hand; talking about our growing intolerance as a culture; talking about becoming tabloid property after Strictly; talking about how Brits love it when things go wrong.
So, yes, “larks” has it right: this is two hours plus of whatever Bailey can have fun with. Which includes politics, poetry, anecdotes, showing us around his array of instruments, a burst of doing his show in German, funny songs. His Tom Waits-style jazz-blues reworking of Old Macdonald is one for the ages (or “YouTube”, as they call it now). His call-and-response, time-shifting singsong of California Dreamin’ is a joy. And when he shows on his keyboard how inappropriate the Star Wars theme would sound in a major key, or how Russian The Star-Spangled Banner would sound in a minor one; when he whips out his Appalachian blues guitar to sing about taking on the Devil in a game of Happy Families... well, it couldn’t be anyone else.
To August 8, roh.org.uk
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