Press

Guardian Guide preview of Headmaster's Son

Comedy preview: Richard Herring: The Headmaster's Son, London

* James Kettle
* The Guardian, Saturday 21 February 2009

Stewart Lee and Richard Herring used to make a lot of TV hay out of mock-deconstructing their comic partnership. It was, they said, necessary for any successful double act to make sure fake differences existed between them. So Lee would adopt the role of a faintly caricatured chic intellectual, while Herring was the knockabout foil, lowering the tone with a stream of postmodern schoolboy innuendo. Post-split, both have continued to mine original and high-quality comedy. As a stand-up, Herring is much more feisty and hands-on with the audience than his ever-deadpan partner, and he's still a master of the scholarly approach to crudity (watch out for an elegant treatise on the correct playground hand gestures to symbolise different types of sexual activity). But he also pushes himself, teasing his crowd by stretching material seemingly beyond its elastic limit. When it works, everything escalates to an irresistible climax; and when it doesn't quite, you can find out exactly what went wrong by checking his compulsive daily blog at richardherring.com.

• Leicester Square Theatre, WC2, Sat, Tue to 28 Feb