Trigger warning: If you are a member of Generation Z—that is, roughly, a person born between the late 1990s and the early 2010s—you may find yourself the butt of a few jokes, or a whole bunch, in Leo Reich: Literally Who Cares?! Or to put it in your parlance, you may be traumatized and end up seeking a safe space to recover from the barrage of microaggressions.
I’m kidding, sort of, and so is Reich, a 24-year-old British comedian who introduced this show to acclaim at last year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe last summer, then took it to London’s Soho Theatre, where it was again greeted by packed audiences and adoring critics. Essentially a standup routine with a dash of electropop concert thrown in—Reich sings, and not badly—Leo Reich blends self-analysis with cultural satire, as standup routines frequently do. The difference here is, most simply put, the emphasis on self.
Our host, who uses masculine pronouns (thanks for asking), introduces himself as queer and, later, Jewish; there are jokes about Nazis and Deutsche Bank. First and foremost, though, the persona Reich has constructed for our entertainment is a narcissist. So are, again, some gifted comedians of various ages; but the narcissism Reich presents here—in character, ostensibly—is so all-consuming, so flat-out giddy, that it’s almost, perversely, refreshing.
Repeatedly, Reich engages audience members and seeks out their responses, only to cut them off and bring the subject back to himself. He begins to expound on subjects of import, threatening to say something substantial, then lapses into comical superficiality. Strutting his stuff in a skintight shirt and shorts, his heavily lined eyes ablaze with purpose, he pauses now and then to read from his “memoir,” a supersized prop book conspicuously titled Portrait of the Artist as a Ripped Slut.
Reich and his peers were, he explains, programmed to be shallow—raised in “a world where social media makes us sell ourselves as if our own personality were a detachable commodity with assignable market value. Vulnerability, authenticity—what can these words even mean when the only language we have left is formed of the hollow stock phrases of corporate individualism?”
It’s pretty thoughtful stuff, even as the grandiose setup for an inevitable punchline. Reich weaves sharp commentary into his bawdy humor, especially when digging into his favorite subject, relationships—primarily his own, of course, and particularly one with an ex-boyfriend who comes up again and again. “Sex is really where I come into my own—as an actor,” he quips, summing up the increasingly performative nature of, well, everything.
Turning his attention to the outside world—to reality TV, fittingly—Reich observes how the spectacularly insipid (I assume) series “Love Island” manages to find and explore “that liminal space between sponsorship and the grave.” After referencing COVID, he muses that he had never envisioned spending so much of his early twenties “Googling the words ‘death toll.'”
The layers of irony get a bit rich at times; frivolity and self-absorption can only be compelling for so long, even served as camp, and there are points where you wonder how much distance there truly is between Leo Reich and Leo Reich. But then, as The Guardian asked last year, in a rave review, “Isn’t the point that irony is the truth for Reich’s cohort of twentysomethings, and artifice the mortar with which they assemble their personalities?”
As the mother of a 15-year-old, I’d like to think it’s not quite as bleak as that. Before Reich appeared on opening night, a woman seated next to me, who looked about his age, took enough selfies to fill a photo album—presumably to document that the performance had really happened because, well, she had been there. But then she laughed and applauded heartily throughout the show, demonstrating what I perceived, perhaps optimistically, as at least a glimmer of self-awareness. If Reich can encourage more of that, he’ll be doing a genuine public service.
Leo Reich: Literally Who Cares?! opened February 26, 2023, at Greenwich House and runs through March 11. Tickets and information: leoreich.com
