It’s a baking day in Bristol, but it’s lovely and cool in the Weston Studio at the Bristol Old Vic as we sit down to watch I’m Not Being Funny by Papatango prize- shortlisted writer Piers Black, fresh from an extended run at the Bush Theatre in London. Black has commented that the play ‘is about what fires this need to laugh and also how we can find humour in the big and the small, the light and the dark. I was also influenced by wanting to write work that had illness and messy, complicated situations but wasn’t afraid to give them life and hope,’ which is an intriguingly broad canvas. 

The play follows Peter (Jerome Yates) and Billie (Tia Bannon) as they prepare in their living room for their first stand up sets, which Billie has signed them up for. The set (Amelia Jane Hankin) feels appropriately intimate and messy, and is strewn with their small daughter’s cuddly toys, who appears via audio on a baby monitor. Peter starts proceedings, awkwardly fumbling through his set which he performs to the audience. When Billie arrives, she is effortlessly confident in hers even as she’s unsure about the material; it would be interesting to learn more about her character’s performing experience and career, given she has such immediate presence even when practising. We watch them work through their material, charmingly performing the stories of their first meeting and first kiss, with fun lighting and music that takes us back to the school disco. Yates and Bannon have an immediate, playful chemistry and while the single setting could feel restrictive, their charisma and rapport largely maintains the momentum – although as the play progresses, it would be nice to learn more about the supporting players in their lives. 

Things take a darker turn as we see flashbacks to more challenging times in their relationship, and we learn why Billie has taken the plunge on trying stand-up. ‘Is This Thing On?’, the film which came out at the start of the year and starred Will Arnett as a character trying it for the first time, similarly depicted performing comedy as a vehicle for emotional processing, but with minimal attention to the writing of material and more emphasis on the value of vulnerability over realism in his experience. But because we’re seeing Peter and Billie practise, their material stopping and starting mostly manages to feel authentic and intimate, without the audience being too preoccupied by the question of whether they’ll actually be entertaining  and funny as performances for their future audience, although they often are. 

The dead ends and frustration of trying to rework experiences for maximum humour is well portrayed, as is as their bickering over what from their lives is fair game, as all the while cracks in their present dynamic become clear. The more serious moments are well done, with Bannon and Jerome never faltering in their commitment to the heightened emotions, but it is a challenge to give all the competing elements the airing they deserve, and sometimes it feels like Black has jumped to emotional outbursts for dramatic impact; the dialogue is articulate and poetic, which can feel slightly over-written in these moments.

By the end, the set-up feels like a starting point for a piece about relationship dynamics rather than an examination of massaging frustration and trauma into comedy as we might have expected, but the performers nail the intimacy and claustrophobia of parenthood, marriage and diminishing opportunities. They received several rounds of enthusiastic applause, which was very much deserved even if it hadn’t been extra warm for them under the lights.