Review of comedian Ricky Gervais’ performance in Prague

One cannot choose what thoughts one will have. But he can decide which one to say out loud. The British comedian Ricky Gervais, who presented his new show Armageddon on Saturday in Prague, decided a long time ago that he will say whatever comes to his mind. Or almost everything.

In an interview with the BBC two months ago, he said that he was drawn to topics that others say are not joke-worthy. Because they are too sensitive or because joking about them would be hurtful to others. That’s the imaginary line (of taste, or tact, if you will) where most people stop, and Ricky Gervais starts there. It was true of his previous standups, and it is true for the new Armageddon.

It is not “tickling the tiger” for its own sake. Gervais doesn’t just want applause for “venturing” into forbidden territory in a time of culture wars. His ambition is to say bad things, but in such a way that they are good jokes at the same time. Because, and this is another of Gervais’s favorite points, making a joke about something doesn’t mean you’re making fun of it.

Conversely, if you laugh at something, then you can’t pretend that you are offended by the joke in question or that it shouldn’t have been said out loud in the first place. Gervais says: laughter is an involuntary reaction by which the viewer confirms that the joke that was told is good. That it works. It has nothing to do with what we think about the world or what opinions we have.

There are only two characteristics of a joke: it is either good or bad. No other division makes sense. There are no right and wrong, evil and good, right and left jokes. Gervais says a joke is like a magic trick. Either it works or it doesn’t. In other words, a joke is like a mathematical equation. Either you solve it or you don’t. And solving it can help you understand how the world works.

Gervais doesn’t want you to laugh or clap because the joke is about someone or something you don’t like. The very idea that he is popular because he is on the “right side” repulses him. Because there is no such thing as a “right side” in the stand-up comedy genre. This brings us back to the characterization of jokes: they are either good or bad. You either laugh at them or you don’t.

The Prague Congress Center was very kind to the British comedian in this regard. He laughed where he should have laughed. Unlike the previous SuperNature show in Prague, where he was upset by a disobedient female viewer (heckler) in the audience, Saturday’s performance went off without any hiccups. Gervais also rewarded Prague with his posts on Twitter and Facebook, where he showed it as a wonderful city.

Actually, two things are fascinating about Gervais’s success in Prague: firstly, that the tickets, by no means cheap, for the English-speaking show were sold out in a matter of minutes. In front of the “Palace of Culture”, tickets were sold to interested parties for more than double the price.

And second: the audience that arrived was educated and knowledgeable. If someone were to observe the reactions of the audience at the Congress Center in Prague and compare them with the reactions of the audience at the Apollo hall in London or Manchester, they would not find much difference.

When Gervais says that the word fascist has devalued that you can call someone who “likes a Joe Rogan tweet,” it’s a joke that needs some context. The Prague audience knew him. This is good news. For Prague, but also for Ricky Gervais. His humor is globally understandable today.

Those who did not get tickets need not despair. We will see Armageddon in 2024 on Netflix. The company coincidentally officially announced a few weeks ago. What exactly we will see, however, is the question. Gervais introduced some jokes from the stage by saying that “you probably won’t see this on Netflix”, or that he still needs to work on “this joke”.

However, this is rather a bit of a cheap trick to make the audience feel like they are present at something special. The show that Gervais showed in Prague, he already presented at the end of last year in large halls in England, albeit with the subtitle “work in progress”, loosely translated as “working version”. Don’t let that fool you: Armageddon is already a fine-tuned, detailed show.

I won’t reveal the specific jokes. Not that I don’t want to, on the contrary, the temptation is great. But it wouldn’t help anyone or anything. Because as usual with stand-up comedy, it’s a kind of humor that works in a specific execution and in a given context. Just for the sake of information, it can be mentioned that Ricky Gervais jokes about disabled people, Africans born with AIDS or children working in Chinese factories producing crap. God, they can’t do them properly?

Of course, Armageddon can be criticized for many things. But with stand-up, it’s always a question of where the boundaries are between the reviewer’s subjective taste and the objective quality of the jokes. Personally, I think that there are perhaps a little too many jokes about pedophiles in a 70-minute show, and that the topic of “Hitler and the Jews” has already been exhausted by the author himself. So why keep coming back to it?

It doesn’t change the fact that Armageddon is – especially for standup lovers – an exceptionally good show. It’s not just fun for boomers, to whom 61-year-old Gervais actively appeals during the show. I would say on a gut feeling (without knowing the data) that the average age of the viewers was around forty. And the audience had a great time.

Given the relatively high price of tickets, it is probably not possible to say that a representative sample of the Czech population arrived at the Congress Center for standup. Probably not even the Prague one. And although Gervais claims that the jokes are neither right-wing nor left-wing, it is quite likely true that the target group of his humor is the more mobile and educated so-called urban liberals.

Which is also evidenced by the reviews that came out last December after Armageddon was released in some British cities. While a critic in the conservative newspaper The Times wrote a positive review and gave it 4 stars out of 5, in the left-wing Guardian the assessment was more reservedly negative, with 2 stars out of 5.

But as already written, it only depends on the point of view. When you want to go on offense, Armageddon offers you countless options. Just like when you want to have fun and laugh.

Ricky Gervais is lucky to have a good audience. “I love my fans. I do it all for them,” he said this year as part of his acceptance speech at the National Comedy Awards in London, where he won several awards for the After Life series on Netflix. “And for money too, of course,” he added.

The sold-out Convention Center gave the British comedian both.