By Thomas Dye
For a good comedian, the most important member of the audience should always be yourself. Why tell a joke you don’t find funny? And after watching Fat Rascal I can say that Stavros Halkias does not tell a joke unless he finds it funny.
There’s something genuinely infectious in watching a comedian punctuate his comedy with his own giggling, and when one person is already laughing it’s so much easier to get taken away with the show.
The higher budget of a Netflix special is felt weirdly throughout this one as a (proudly) short man with a Hawaiian button-up riffs at a guy in a Slipknot t-shirt sat up in the orchestra of Austin paramount theatre, but the changed setting doesn’t detract in any way, the crowd work is still as intimate as ever and Stav’s confidence keeps the room energised.
The content of the show sticks closely to what fans of his previous tours have come to expect, hitting on the stupid, dull horror of the tech world, the strange travelling lifestyle of a touring comedian and most of all sex
The undeniable undercurrent of Fat Rascal is that Stavros Halkias is a man with a small dick who loves sex, it’s not deep insightful cultural commentary (though it is remarkably self-aware) and it’s not going to revolutionise the way people tell jokes, but it is an excellent show of what Stav does best: tell jokes and look damn good doing it.
It might be that I’m just the target audience but when he does hit on a cultural sticking point he hits for the fences; Americans doing anti-Greek racism is absurd, airlines being able to just kick you from a flight is insane and sometimes old people can just be sluts.
If you aren’t a fan of sex comedy or continual reference to oral sex then this special might get a bit grating, and whilst I wouldn’t call the show sexist, as it is a man talking in exaggerated terms about his relationships and hookups it can pull a bit close to the line.
But again, all of this is through an incredibly self-aware and positive angle. Every time it pulls close to the limit it pulls away into well-thought-out self-depreciation, the topic may be a difficult airline worker, but the joke is that Stav is a fat rascal.
Fat Rascal is a good comedy show, it’s well-paced, it keeps its topics short but punchy and as always Stav plays the crowd like a nasty, dirty little pianist.