Prufrock and Me (Greater Manchester Fringe Festival)

Audiences will be familiar with the discovery, usually in teen years, of a book/play/song/poem to which they can relate completely.

Recently Manchester hosted a festival in which local writers made clear how much their lives had been influenced by the Dr. Who TV show. Stand up comedian Dave Williams has a more up-market obsession – his new show centres on his relationship with T. S Eliot’s voyeuristic, self-aware outsider J. Alfred Prufrock.

Although Williams quotes extensively from the poem, and speaks the verse beautifully, he makes clear that Prufrock and Me is intended to be autobiographical rather than an analysis of a work of art. Williams, a shy and solitary teen, relates to Prufrock’s awareness of his limited impact upon the universe and how his fear of failure inhibits action. Yet somehow Williams becomes able to overcome his timidity and develop into a stage performer.

Williams acknowledges that Prufrock and Me is a work in progress. This is most apparent in the first half of the show. Williams opens speaking eloquently of the autumnal mood of the poem but seems initially reluctant to leave the comfort zone of stand up comedy.

The performance is illustrated with slides from an overhead projector showing images from the poem and mockingly contradicting Williams’s more flamboyant statements. When he makes his mission statement of celebrating a masterpiece a caption on the screen revels the actual purpose is: To show how sensitive I am.

The jokes in the opening section have a defensive feel as if Williams is easing himself into his theme. He constantly remarks that certain jokes would be better in another type of show but that doesn’t prevent him from telling them anyway. Williams enhances the rather mundane opening autobiographical anecdotes by relating them to aspects of the poem. He explains that girls at school did not run from him because they sensed he, like Prufrock, was not a threat.

When Williams allows the mood to darken the show becomes more original and daring. The one way in which Williams differs from his literary hero is that he eventually stops hesitating and makes a life-changing decision. Williams’s description of his development into a comedian is lacerating in its honesty.

His decision to risk a career as a stand up is motivated by his office job driving him to depression. It is a discomforting honesty that comes as a surprise after the lighter material that opened the show. Although Williams shows that his life has improved by behaving less like Prufrock, he remains true to his diffident muse by suggesting that he prefers not to pursue a superstar lifestyle.

Prufrock and Me is an ambitious attempt at widening the autobiographical comedy genre to include darker themes. It is still uneven in delivery but has tremendous potential as a piece of original storytelling.

Prufrock Me is at the Kings Arms Salford again on 14 July.

– Dave Cunningham