Stuart Daulman – Masterclass

Stuart Daulman is delving into the inner workings of comedy to offer his “services” as a seasoned veteran on the scene. Along with sidekick Jake Ludowyke handling the slides (the pair reuniting after last year’s sensational Death Of A Daulman), the two deliver a TED Talk-style commencement for the ages, showing the audience how to supposedly make it both on and off the stage.

There’s a very bizarre meta-angle to the piece that makes the audience question just how much of the ancillary work around the show is even real. Did Daulman set up intricate aspects of his social media presence to facilitate Masterclass in a Daniel Day-Lewis-level commitment to creating this character? Did he simply notice a flourishing trend to which he had already succumbed, and seized upon the opportunity to make something special? Perhaps not even the third character, his own mother, even knows.

While Masterclass, at least on the surface, is the self-deprecating memoir of a character comedian, what lies beneath is something far more prescient. It’s a savagely ferocious indictment on the toxic masculine culture of stand-up comedy, a brilliant 'fuck you' to the scene and how it can destroy the emotional vulnerability of the hard-working comic. Daulman is open about his own struggles with trying to make it, and the internal battles that have arisen along the way, once again reaping the seeds he has sewn earlier in the show by declaring that honesty is a way to get people on side. It’s both cynical and brilliant, and on every level, it works.

Once again, Daulman has created something entirely on the fringes of conventional comedy. Once again, he has gone above and beyond in making something layered and poignant. Once again, he has fucking nailed it. A show that will particularly resonate with anyone who has delved into the belly of the stand-up beast, but will delight and astound absolutely everyone.