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You will laugh in ways that you didn’t think you could.

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A man stands on a stage. Sweat pours from his head. His shirt is tucked into his underwear. He has two plastic guns on his hips. A NYT Critics Pick sticker is peeling off his shirt. He says ‘So I’m sitting there…’. This is the tenth time he’s said this. He will say it ten times more. We will laugh every time. Maybe we were the clowns all along.

Zach Zucker performs under the alias Jack Tucker and is perhaps best known for emceeing Stamptown, the comedy-cabaret-vaudeville-circus-musical-armageddon revue that rocks the Fringe every year and tours the world to great acclaim. For Stamptown, he twists the traditional ringmaster into something like an anarchic toddler – following any joke that pops up like a greyhound and ensuring that every act appears at least half an hour after their scheduled time. Not to discredit the incredible performers that grace Stamptown, but you often leave wanting more of Tucker’s scatty ramblings. Jack Tucker’s Comedy Stand-Up Hour is a intriguing chance to see if he can maintain Stamptown’s relentless energy without ten others to prop him up.

Unsurprisingly, yes. He can. The sheer pace and quantity of jokes that Tucker brings is unlike anything else on the comedy circuit. 

Zucker, along with his sound technician Jonny, both trained at the renowned clown school École Philippe Gaulier (the school’s town Etamp gives Stamptown its name). The school’s ethos of capitalising on comedy failure is the lifeblood of this show, and Tucker’s relationship with his techie is one of modern comedy’s great double acts. Nearly every joke falls flat, but is immediately picked up by a sound cue, which Tucker riffs on, then another sound cue, ad infinitum. It’s a fresh humour that is always genuinely unexpected. Now and again, they’ll combine for a genuine bit of dynamite comedy, to remind you that they could do a whole hour synchronised if they wanted to – but their willingness to fail and trust in their abilities to make comedy magic out of it is what separates Tucker from all of his peers. 

One element of the show that might get lost in the furore is how beautifully subversive it is. Jack Tucker is a hack New York comic lost in a world that he can’t catch up with. Zach Zucker is a forward-thinking progressive who posts Reels of him street-dancing. There are points where these two characters blur and merge – not only are these consistently hilarious, but the tension of not knowing whether we’re seeing Jack or Zach is electric; especially in the context of a modern comedy landscape where the blueprint is ‘bigotry – wait for applause’ (see: Gervais).

This unsettling atmosphere of not knowing what’s real and what’s planned extends beyond Tucker’s character. He references a set list about an hour in: ‘we are three jokes in’. A mishap with a sandbag derails the show for a solid twenty minutes. The 80 minute advertised runtime is obliterated, all with nervy looks at the glaring Soho Theatre FOH member to Tucker’s right. Is that a Stamptown alum in street clothes? Or will Zucker be pulled in for a bollocking after the show? Will there be another night? Or will Westminster’s curfew laws shut the show down entirely? There is rebelish joy in seeing someone so boldly tread their feet over the line, and not knowing the true danger of it.

The bones of Tucker’s stand-up lie in collaboration. Perhaps that’s what makes watching this show feel like more of a moment than seeing a superstar comic in a sold-out arena. You’re watching someone bat away constant external attacks whilst containing a frantic, non-stop internal psyche. It feels odd to slap the ‘voice of a generation’ label on a comic, but there’s something vital in modern society that Tucker has captured; the obsession with short-form content, beyond-parody politics, the consumption of all media at a rate unthinkable two decades ago, the attempt to rationalise a world that gets more absurd by the day.

All of this is an attempt to mine a show for meaning that is just really, gut-shakingly funny. You will laugh in ways that you didn’t think you could. I’d get a ticket soon. Something tells me that when he returns to the UK, you’ll have to battle for them.