‘Ilove America!,” says Kieran Hodgson, which is quite the opening gambit in a week when the country has risked kickstarting the third world war. But that is the Yorkshireman’s point: there is a better US, now occluded by He Who Shall Barely Be Named, but still worth believing in. Voice of America traces Hodgson’s lifelong love affair with the States, in the teeth of his Europhile parents’ distaste, the disillusion of the Bush years and a recent doomed bid for Hollywood success.
It joins as big-hitting a body of work as any in comedy, a suite of autobiographical shows itemising the nerdy obsessions (cycling; Mahler; European politics) of child and adult Kieran. Voice of America hits less big, for my money, partly because its subject is less lovably niche, and also because the binary thinking (America good? America bad?) is simplistic before Hodgson arrives at his predictably more nuanced conclusion.
You may have to park your scepticism at Hodgson’s vision (seen through the star-spangled eyes of youth) of the US pre-2000 as a paradise before the fall. This middle-class ingenue from Holmfirth looks in awe at Home Alone, Will Smith and the soaring speeches of JFK. His parents’ dismissal of “American rubbish” only fuels his fetish for Americana. Then comes his career in entertainment, and a growing sense that Tinseltown is the only place to be.
The show circles around a tale Hodgson tells of his would-be breakthrough role in a superhero movie, and the can of worms prised open by his obligation to play an American. What, or who,isan American anyway? Is it the culture vulture he meets at the opera? Or is it the current president, whom our host refuses to talk about, but who keeps threatening a hostile takeover of the show? This all supplies a great platform for Hodgson’s vocal and mimicry talent, and for neat jokes, too, like the Canadians/Ewoks number, or the one about the audio entertainment on Hodgson family road trips. Its structure may, like Trump, be crude – but this is another fine show about a meek Brit grappling with the all-conquering myth, and reality, of America.
AtSoho theatre, London, until 28 June. Then atPleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, 30 July-24 August.