Adam Riches’ virtually method approach to comedy – in which he loses himself entirely in a character and accent – has taken a logical turn in the last couple of years, with him now making one-man-shows that sit in the theatre section of the Edinburgh Fringe programme. They’re still funny, but that’s not the main point of these detailed characted studies of real life figures.
Last year it was Jimmy, in which Riches took on the persona of Jimmy Connors, a complicated, pathologically competitive tennis star of the ’70s who’d fallen into obscurity before making an extraordinary comeback in 1991.
There are definitely similarities to its follow-up, The Captain. Both concern quixotic-bordering-on-eccentric real-life figures, who were written off only to triumph… in a fairly qualified way.
The captain in question is James Webb, the first man to swim the English Channel (in 1875), a feat that was all the more remarkable because despite this being the great Victorian age of exploration, almost nobody gave a hoot about what Webb was trying to do: swimming was only just starting to tentatively take off as lesiure activity and wouldn’t really become popular until the early 20th century.
The really big difference between Riches’ two theatre shows is that we do not see The Captain from Webb’s point of view. Instead it’s that of his swimming coach Fred Beckwith, a kind of Ishmael to Webb’s Ahab. It’s a smart move, I think: despite the century separating Webb and Connors’ lives, I can see why ‘overly competitive man’ might be a bit much as a character two years in a row.
With a mannered accent (that I’m either idiotically failing to place or is based on recordings of actual Victorians), Riches has gentle fun with Beckwith, a swimming advocate from another age who extols the little loved art of sidestroke (there are a lot of gags about sidestroke), hasn’t heard of butterfly (it hadn’t been invented back then), and indulges in some light audience interaction as he takes delivers the show like a sort of public seminar.
He clears doesn’t really know what he’s doing vis a vis training a man for a Channel swim (but why would he?) and has a somewhat ambivalent attitude towards Webb: he is awed by his determination but often uneasy about it too, especially in Webb’s troubled post-crossing career.
It’s a deftly understated piece of storytelling that feels like both a pointed attempt to do something a little more introverted than the bombastic Jimmy, but also The Critic’s Way, the much much sillier outright comedy show Riches has also taken to the Fringe this year. I wonder if perhaps The Critic’s Way wouldn’t benefit from some of The Captain’s soulfulness, while The Captain is maybe gentle to a fault – it sort of fades out sadly without quite giving us the catharsis or provocation it threatens to. Still, Riches’ shows are beautifully crafted and never boring – keep this workrate up and a classic is surely on its way.