Comedian Alfie Brown is taking his acclaimed show Lunatic on tour.

How much honesty do we actually want? How much reality are we willing to tolerate? Not very much, according to Alfie Brown, who returns to Soho Theatre next week with his latest showLunatic, before embarking on tour in 2019.   

Sure, we devour honest and confessional comedy about abuse, grief and hardship, but only so that we can fetishise it by sitting there and thinking: ‘Well it hasn’t happened to me, but well done me for listening to someone else talk about it’. 

Alfie Brown, one of the most lucid, fearless and boundary-pushing voices in British stand-up is here to deal with grotesque honesty. The sort of honesty you don’t want. The sort of honesty that terrifies people in case it resonates. And how easily that fear and guilt can turn into offence. 

Lunatic is inspired by Alfie’s reaction to watching someone nearly die at a bus stop. He examines how we communicate in moments of extremity and the commitment required to do the right thing…or at least to give the impression we’re doing the right thing.   

Other subjects addressed in the show are: The Grenfell Tragedy and the moral ambiguity of some of those trying to help; Trying to be a good father when, chances are, you aren’t; Giving up porn because of the psychological problems it causes and the effect it has on how you see women, and then slipping up and watching head scarf porn; Being a white Uber driver and for the first time feeling white; The moral loopholes in Veganism: And is male sexuality a mental illness?

All of this combines to form a meditation on how so often people use identity politics and performative virtue do stop themselves from being who they really are.

Alfie Brown Tour Dates

·         26th Nov to 1st Dec - Soho Theatre, London

·         4th Feb -Black Box, Belfast

·         7th Feb - West End Centre, Aldershot

·         11th Feb - The Cookie, Leicester

·         12th Feb - Komedia, Brighton

·         13th Feb - G Live, Guildford

·         15th Feb - Hot Water Comedy, Liverpool

·         16th Feb - The Basement, York

·         17th Feb - Tobacco Factory, Bristol

·         18th Feb - Orchard Theatre, Dartford

·         28th Feb - Patron, Manchester

·         1st March - Last Laugh, Sheffield

·         3rd March - Toomler, Amsterdam

·         14th March - Hilarity Bites, Darlington

·         15th March - Blackfriars, Glasgow

·         17th March - Monkey Barrell, Edinburgh

·         11th April - The Mill Arts Centre, Banbury

·         18th April - Rondo Theatre, Bath

·         24th April - Tudor House, Shrewsbury

·         28th April - Junction, Cambridge

·         8th May - Nordon Farm, Maidenhead

Picture: James Deacon