CLINTON BAPTISTE AT THE JUNCTION
‘I’m getting JFK, he is here with me now’….Thus the words of the comedy clairvoyant Clinton Baptiste, late of Phoenix Nights. Alex Lowe has created a monster of comic creation – a spiritual charlatan of epic proportions. His gig at The Junction brought in a huge crowd of devotees who thought the one hour warm up and interval was worth the wait. The first half was presented by a very able stand up called Rich Wilson, a shaggy haired middle ager who bonded well with the audience through his merciless interrogation of the front row. Names and occupations were revealed: a seller of traffic cones who purveyed them in magenta (comedy gold here as you can imagine), and an A&E nurse who relayed some graphic stories of butternut squash misuse. Wilson’s act (much more than a warm up) was convivial, relentlessly smutty and most importantly, provided the offstage Baptiste with some fodder for the second half.
After a long interval (the Junction bar is not the fastest draw in the West) and much SFX hype on came our faux spirit messenger – a puffed up, glittery, monstrously bewigged Madame Arcati. Think Donald Trump meets late period Elvis.
With a deliberately tacky background – a series of life size letters spelling the name C L I N T – there was much fun later as the hapless necromancer inadvertently pushed the second and third letters together to spell out a very rude word. It was childish but got the biggest laugh of the evening from this reviewer.
The Baptiste story as told, is that he has recently returned from a gig in Las Vegas – or more precisely a dingy cabaret bar around 40 miles away from the bright lights of Sin City. This Junction show was in effect in two distinct parts: the telling of his mishaps amid the low lives of Nevada (and later Mexico) and some cockeyed clairvoyance. For the latter, Baptiste came among the audience – ruthlessly exploited that front row again – and further into the stalls where, he told us, his psychic powers were leading him to reveal comical truths. ‘Are you called John? No? Do you know a John?’ ‘What’s your name?’ ‘Katy’ ‘Katy, that’s right!’
Messages from the ‘other side’ as anodyne and daft as in a ‘real’ séance poured out of our multi-dimensional Mercury. ‘Spirit wants to know if the word ‘nonce’ means anything to you Darren?’ That kind of thing.
With his outrageous glitter costume, puffed up body, flowing white wig – Baptiste makes for a truly comic presence. Though much of his humour relied on playground naughtiness, I most enjoyed his psychic act with the audience. The Las Vegas telling was I felt a little laboured and there was a damp squib episode involving magical healing crystals from Mexico that came a cropper under the maestro’s careless hands.
Where the character was at his best was the faux spirit world messages from this dodgy Mercury. I forsee, and the spirits back me up in this, a good future for this hapless mystic. But then he was probably told that by JFK.
