IS IT ironic that Scott Capurro can't perform a show about offending audiences without offending his audience? Or merely the perfection of his dubious art? I'm assuming the spiky San Franciscan will be crying "why choose me? I'm a screaming c***" aft
er successive walkouts this run.
But on the evening I saw him, a truly tense stand-off developed with a burly punter who demanded Capurro tell "some jokes", the implication being without your snide references to Aids and Madeleine McCann in a feather boa, though the irony or otherwise of your racism I'm somewhat ambivalent about.
If this had been Brendon Burns's 2007 show, we might have been experiencing a mischievous coup de theatre. But this was for real and when he starts jabbing people's buttons, he simply can't stop himself, and Capurro aggressively cowed him into departure.
For a performer so vaingloriously poisonous, Capurro is the antidote to all those who attend stand-up knowing nothing about the act or expecting their world view to be reaffirmed. Buying his ticket, you're agreeing to a tacit pact that the unsayable will be said.
Nevertheless, there's a degree of truth underpinning many of his more rancorous observations, with a predominantly white Edinburgh audience laughing nervously at the assertion that we'd vote Obama for reasons he outlines as racist. That Capurro's final line is sweet, in spite of what's gone before, only reaffirms that, being such a good comic, he might almost be bearable as a person.
• Until 24 August. Today 9:15pm
The full article contains 265 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
