Witty reflection, rhetoric and optimism from Simon Evans
Bringing his wit, sharp observation and sense of the absurd – in himself just as much as the objects of his attention – Simon Evans brought the final part of his trilogy to the Arlington Arts Centre.
How We Met? follows on from Genius 2.0, a despairing wail against our seeming declining appetite for intelligent dialogue in national life, whose laughs were longest and loudest when the comparative shortcomings of politicians like Jeremy Corbyn and Liz Truss were in Simon’s cross-hairs, and The Work of the Devil, a polemic about the apparent trend of swapping out broad social compromise and cohesion in favour of individual, and sometimes very particular, rights before delivering a personal ground-shaker in the identity-challenging discovery by Simon that his Dad was not his father but, instead, he was conceived in a fertility clinic to a Jewish donor.
Both pieces very much in Simon Evan’s central ground of social commentary and observation, Have We Met? – set up as an exploration of the comic’s failing memory in his late-50s – overlays the perspective of ageing and the eccentricities that can be magnified by it. Although an old and much-loved routine, he spreads out the endless cycle that flows from forgetting what he went upstairs for as an epic effort, fraught with setbacks. His audience identified with it well.
Classical references were cleverly woven into his script, permitting him amongst other things to self-identify coincidentally and ridiculously alongside Alfred Tennyson and James Joyce in their exploration of Ulysses. If only he could remember to record his one-day experience of 16th June – any 16th June – the day on which Joyce’s novel takes place…
While articulate and competent throughout, with a good number of chuckles, some of the thoughts and themes were piecemeal agglomerations. That said, Simon determinedly locks horns with memory and its shape-changing shadows, while recognising that forgetting some bits isn’t all bad. He ends on an optimistic note.
How We Met? is touring in theatres up and down the country into Spring 2025. He next visits Croydon and thereafter Chipping Camden.
Photo by kind permission of Arlington Arts Centre
