Now that’s a callback! Could old jokes become the new trend of comedy? | comedy

forHe tours classic albums in their entirety. Movies are being re-released to celebrate big anniversaries. Great plays are performed over and over again. But in live-action comedy, revival is no big deal. It is an art form based on surprise, the surprise of the new. Recycling old materials is not something that has been done. But could that be about to change? I saw two Soho Theater shows being revived to celebrate their 10th anniversary, by comedians who clearly saw the value – and a new audience – in bringing decade-old sets back to the stage. Both have been remade by production company Berk’s Nest – which isn’t ruling out more of the same if these two take a swing.

Both shows can be classified as “theatrical comedies”, and are arguably more susceptible to this treatment than the straight show. But the timing is pure coincidence – and the two shows are (re)presented in very different ways. Joseph Morpurgo works with Berk’s Nest on a brand new show, his first since 2017’s Hammerhead. The idea of ​​remaking Hammerhead predecessor Soothing Sounds for Baby, which in 2015 was nominated for an Edinburgh Comedy Award, was a byproduct of this process, aiming to remind audiences of Morpurgo’s solo lineage (away from Austentatious, for which he might be better known) before releasing new material.

It reminds us: The show is a solid draft of high-concept comedy — still timid, slippery, and silly a decade after its debut. He imagines Morpurgo being interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs. Kirsty Young’s audio clips are stitched together to provide the bizarre half of the conversation. Morpurgo lends support to the latter, telling the story of a youthful love he once had, pausing to announce this or that beloved song on the soundtrack of his life LP. Each of these recordings are charity shop throwbacks, and each is brought to comedic life by our host, playing alternately dating coach, posh piano teacher, and narrator of some unexpectedly harrowing children’s stories.

It’s a fun experience the second time around, although that’s not the case for me like Enjoyable. Which might bring us back to the reasons why comedians don’t usually retread old ground. The element of surprise, which is the key to laughter, is diminished; Grandmother’s joy diminished. Maybe there are other factors at play as well? Ten years ago, this type of creative comedy was less common, and it featured this scene (produced at the time by the creators of the soon-to-be-defunct live-action comedy, The Invisible Dot). Soothing Sounds for Baby must have been more than an unexpected treat. We’re now more accustomed to sitcoms, and the qualities I previously admired about Soothing Sounds (the fact that it feels like three different shows in one, for example) feel like flaws this time around.

In this context, it’s no surprise that I’m getting more out of Jack Rooke’s Good Grief – the show that first launched the talent and themes behind Channel 4’s hit sitcom Big Boys. I didn’t watch Good Grief in 2015, when it was rated theatrical, so there was no tax on my entertainment from a second viewing. What also gives Rooke’s show more interest is that he contextualizes it — not just by bookending it with reflections on his experience making it, its success, and his current relationship with the material, but also through the various nods and winks midway through the show to how far he (and we) have come since 2015.

This is easier for Rock than for Morpurgo. He’s a more extroverted, joyful performer, and his material has the ways of that kind of back chat — and he’s got a decade under his belt of audience intimacy and (a certain level of) fame. In any case, it makes Good Grief 2.0 a delightful and still moving watch, with Jack then and now telling the story of his father’s death when he was just a teenager, replete with video interludes from his grandmother and the passing of a barley loaf from Søren.

There’s a more obvious reason for Rooke’s revival too, which is that after the last series of Big Boys, he found himself at the end of a decade of grief-related projects, wanting to reconnect with the original motivation behind it – and with the sad young man he once was. It’s moving to hear that plainly, and to hear his rousing post-show speech about how difficult (even impossible) it would be for a working-class boy from Watford to bring such a show to Edinburgh today.

As with Morpurgo, so with Rooke, these two blasts from the recent past give us a perspective on comedy then and now, and a respite from the art form’s insatiable hunger for the new. Is traditional comedy the new frontier? Maybe not. But we are better off, on this evidence, by looking back from time to time.