Bill Burr is famous for being angry and he had plenty to fume about on his brief London visit. His plane was delayed, a button popped off his shirt and his dressing room heater was off. Luckily he soon raised the temperature onstage with his high-octane set.
There is nothing earthshakingly original about the 45-year-old Bostonian, who played Kuby in Breaking Bad. He simply does his day job extremely well, whether talking about adopting the sweatshop boy who made his shirt, discussing guns or worrying about psychos hiding in his hotel room. He shouts, grins and holds the mic stand for emphasis. His stagecraft is close to perfect.
At times, however, the material was a little too dumbed down, with the star playing the fool. As he wryly noted, we are all the same, “just watching different sports”. He recently married and has slightly mellowed, yet there was still a hint of the barstool chauvinist in his admission that he was trying to do a show without “trashing women”.
While Burr has been dubbed the new Louis CK, he is more of a comedy everyman, lacking Louis CK’s trademark bleakness. But as everyman stand-ups go, he takes some beating.
