Stuart Laws is known for high-concept stand-up hours, playing silly characters as he unravels the intricacies of absurd scenarios. But in recent years, he’s done stand-up about his real life, particularly an adult autism diagnosis.
Even his reality-based show, in its hour-long form, contained conceptual stuff like relationships explained via the metaphor of playing cards, and flights of fancy like a haunted ship in the Antarctic. However, he has recently released a special on YouTube, called Three-Way, that strips away those aspects, and most of the other structural stuff. It trades them in for a new experiment: displaying selected routines multiple times, from different nights in different venues.
It’s tough to get the feel of live stand-up to fully translate to a recording, and the format of this special approaches that goal from an interesting direction. It considers that at in-person events, the atmosphere in the room, especially the audience’s reactions, can greatly affect the experience. Three-Way captures this by letting us hear the same material with different audiences, slightly different lighting, different décor. The effect changes a little each time, and this has the added bonus of letting us appreciate extra layers to jokes when we hear them again.
Stuart Laws is well placed to tackle the challenge of making a recording feel like the physical show, as he has extensive experience with producing and directing stand-up specials. It makes sense that he’d go for something creative with his own special, and the editing is nicely done to weave seamlessly from one venue to another, so the viewer feels an overall effect.
The format is fun for a comedy nerd to analyse, yet the material itself is Laws at his most “club comedy”-esque, with the high concepts stripped back. But it says something about him that even this “club set” still involves creative use of the gilet, highly whimsical and thematically-relevant crowd work, and making the viewer feel sympathy for an inanimate sign. It still contains entertaining callbacks and insightful commentary about the confusing nature of navigating the world while autistic. Plus a lot of jokes about bodily fluids, but intellectual ones, since there are numbers in them.
The jokes are solid, the whole thing feels fun and moves along at a breezy pace, and there is something here to entertain everyone. Unless you deeply hate gilets, then this one may not be for you.
You can watch Stuart Laws Three-Way, for free on YouTube here.
Simon Huxtable