Having only ever been to one comedy show (with Eddie Izzard in a large London venue), I was not sure how it was going to roll – a guy (James Cary) coming to entertain us in the village hall and with the associated challenge that his subject was “God, the Bible and everything.” I knew he had been a writer on the TV series Miranda, which I love, so I was intrigued to see where he would go. With a well-stocked bar and a packed hall, there was a great atmosphere. He got the crowd going and seemed to enjoy his fast paced show as much as his audience (it didn’t quite fulfil the 60-minute brief, but wasn’t far off, and we could, as he promised, get to bed by 9:30pm).
He started with, on the one hand, a dictionary definition of the Big Bang, and on the other, the Bible’s account of creation in Genesis (in which God spoke all things into being). He observed that humans speak and animals don’t, and words and language formed the basis for his show – including the difficulties of communication one to another, and God to us and the comedic angles on all of it.
Cary has an appealing an eye for the comic in the everyday with special attention to wrangles with household tech, and the ways we attempt to communicate with our loved ones but don’t do it that well. He managed to weave his everyday observations into a canter through a particular story arc within the Bible: God’s mission to overcome the destructive force of the devil, pictured as the serpent. With fresh eyes, Cary highlighted extraordinary features of some of the most familiar Bible stories and also cleverly demonstrated how the story arc of the serpent ties many of these well-known tales together.
He finished his show with an extract from one of his own books – “The gospel according to a sitcom writer.” He seems to share a quality I have observed in other great Christian communicators which is to have in equal measure 100% respect for the material he is talking about (i.e. the precious message of Jesus) and 100% confidence that it’s OK to look at it from different angles, explore how it came to be and, in his case, have a laugh and allow others to see the funny side, too.
I was too busy chatting on the night to buy the book, but will go searching for it now …
