Putz: Award-Winningly Awkward
When the house goes dark off the top of Putz, the nasal and at times grating voice of Andrew Bailey rings out in black: “Before the beginning of time, God said, ‘I’m lonely, I’m going to create myself.’
And he was good at creating himself.” Then he made Adam who, after a conversation or two with God, decides that he too is lonely. God replies, “but you have me.” “Not that kind of lonely,” Adam quips. So God made Eve (“but not from Adam’s rib because that’s sexist” – notes Bailey, interjecting his own story.) After they eat the forbidden apple and, upon realizing their nudity, laugh at each other’s bits, they run and hide from a now-angry God, in a bush. It was this point that Adam first felt like a “putz.”
At this cue the lights come up to reveal the Biblical interpreter himself: a glasses clad, high sock, short sporting, admittedly Obsessive Compulsive fellow with many a voice in his head. And he’s not afraid to admit it. Over the next hour, he tells us without censorship all about what those voices tell him.
Other unrestricted accounts also ensue: of the discovery of his sexuality (by accidentally rubbing against the bathroom sink); of his laboured attempts to repress that sexuality, due to religious-rooted anxiety. Plagued from a young age by distressing voices that attempted to convince him that he was a harmful person, a murderer, and a rapist, social interaction did not come easily - especially in the relationship department. Thank God for his Lesbian best friend. Their relationship from age fourteen, when she comes out to him, into adulthood provides camaraderie and a loose structural reference point in the story telling.
Referring to himself as the “fashionable gay best friend in reverse” (thus being the opposite of fashionable), Bailey acts out amusing anecdotes about being a faithful, furrow-browed buddy. When his best friend goes away to college and delves into dating as a dyke, he plays the role of supportive e-mail martyr. Providing prolonged long-distance advice about the uncharted territory of relationships, the ever-virginal Bailey makes himself into a compassionate companion (if a little longwinded).
All the while, he continues to lose his religious faith, and attempts to find romance are fruitless. (He has given himself the okay to date after being encouraged by a psychiatrist.) One of the show’s funniest moments happens when, at a date to the movies, trying for complete honesty, he nervously rambles off a list of all his shortcomings at a rate faster than any auctioneer... for seven minutes.
While much of the show’s shtick is Bailey’s self-deprecation humour, he is clearly confident delivering his self-composed material with well-rehearsed precision (and a slight simper when pausing for audience laughter – which is often). In certain segments (“man juice”) he employs a giant pad of paper to exhibit the unexpectedly explicit, often hand drawn, cartoons that illustrate his ideas.
But there are too many (ideas) and they are very scattered. Chronological leap-frogging takes linear storytelling out of the equation. A clumsy attempt is made to relate the creation story from the start to his best friend’s breakup; he takes on God’s role, feeling inadequate when he cannot fulfill the void left in his friend from her broken heart. It’s a muddled medley of loose ends, lost love and failed faith. But what the script lacks in clarity and concision, it makes up in Geek points. It gets back on course with intercourse. In an award-winningly awkward account of his first time, Bailey overshares: “Our bodies moved against each other, making these farting noises”. He simulates the noises with his hands. He may be crazy, but he’s a lovable putz.
Directed by: Jacob Richmond; Written and Performed by: Andrew Bailey
For more information and to join the debate go here.