Review: Joe Kent-Walters is Frankie Monroe...

What is this greasepaint-faced northern ghoul scuttling up to the stage? Why is he at once thoroughly disgusting, and yet strangely pitiable? Why are we laughing quite so hard at his special trowel? There’s two answers to all of this, one physical and one metaphysical. This is Frankie Monroe, the character creation of Joe Kent-Walters, an out-of-time club comic from the Misty Moon working men’s club in Rotherham, and winner of the 2023 BBC New Comedy Awards. Tonight he’s joined by a small team of other characters, including his cousin Brandy, a puppet called Mucky Little Pup, and (unseen) “The Committee” who, concerningly, have consigned Frankie to hell after he sold his soul to the devil to keep things in the club as they’ve always been.

It’s neither sane nor normal and, though perhaps it veers too often into Vic and Bob territory, Kent-Walters' characterisation is so complete as to make this riotously funny. There’s a joke within a joke trick that Kent-Walters uses to find Mucky Pup’s voice that I’d watch all night, though he rations it perfectly. So what of the metaphysics? Somewhere in all of this is a homage, a lament, and a letting go of the working men’s clubs that, at one time, and for better and worse, filled a huge cultural space in Britain. Though Frankie Monroe is anything but delicate, Kent-Walters’ grappling with this history is. It’s both respectful and forward-looking, clever and funny without ever being smartarse.