Eddie Pepitone, Special review - return of the curmudgeon

There aren’t many comics like Eddie Pepitone any more – the veteran comic’s shtick harks to back an earlier age, pre-suitable for TV and Netflix specials. As the New Yorker says drily in his latest special, The Collapse, he was never going to be considered as a host of either a reality programme full of beautiful people or a smarmy late-night chat show.

No, he tells it as it is as he rants and rails against the indignities of getting older, reflects on his career and what irritates him – seemingly most things.

He starts the way he means to go on, talking about his Apple Watch and why he loves it: “I like knowing one to three people have died making it”, begins one of the several long-format anecdotes he tells in the hour-long show. 

Pepitone has made a career out of being curmudgeonly and sarcastic  (he’s known as the Bitter Buddha) and has many people and grievances in his sights – those who look for validation on social media, Nasa, fans of Marvel movies and those still who have cable TV (although he’s old-school enough to be releasing this show as an album). It was recorded at Chicago’s Lincoln Hall and directed by Steven Feinartz.

The bile – and there’s lots of it – is leavened by a playfulness and a sense that his self-loathing is an act that we’re invited to laugh at it because we’re in on the joke; life may indeed be bleak for some, but there’s always a gag as a release valve. And, whisper it, he seems to have mellowed a bit too.

At one point, Pepitone goes into the audience to heckle himself; who better to heckle a comic than the comic, who knows his own vulnerabilities better than anyone? But he’s playing again, mocking the pretentiousness of the meta moment – and possibly the chutzpah of using some very old material here too.

Pepitone’s shouty, sweary style means much of the hour is one-note, but after a few decades in the business he can still command an audience.

• Available now on Veeps and as an album on Blonde Medicine on 15 August
• More comedy reviews on theartsdesk