There was something wonderfully fitting about the setting for Jonny Brook’s performance of This Isn’t the Life I Expected. Staged in the raw, red-brick back room of the Victorian Eagle Inn in Salford on Sunday 12 July, it felt like the sort of place that L.S. Lowry might have immortalised in one of his paintings – honest, unpretentious and unmistakably Northern.
It also wasn’t the performance I expected.
Brook walked onto the stage in obvious discomfort, relying heavily on his NHS crutches and clearly battling genuine pain before he had even begun. Yet within moments he had transformed that vulnerability into comedy of remarkable warmth, intelligence and originality.
Playing to an audience of just four people would be enough to unsettle many seasoned comedians. Jonny Brook simply embraced the intimacy, delivering his monologue with complete commitment, as though the room were packed. It was an object lesson in professionalism.
His disability is central to his act, but never in the way you might anticipate. Rather than inviting sympathy, he weaponises it for comedy. Referring to himself with words such as “spastic” and “cripple” initially made me wince. Who uses language like that anymore? Yet, because those words belong to him, he disarms the audience, challenging our discomfort before turning it into laughter.
The stories are beautifully observed. Medical appointments, invasive examinations and the endless absurdities of navigating life with a disability become rich comic material. Brook has an enviable ability to uncover humour in situations most people would rather forget.
The show is also peppered with wonderfully unexpected moments. A seemingly ordinary tale about buying biscuits becomes laugh-out-loud funny, while the revelation that he enjoys using a chilled Twix as a straw to drink a latte is so gloriously ridiculous that it perfectly captures his offbeat way of seeing the world.
Throughout the evening, Brook never seeks pity and never tugs at the audience’s heartstrings. Instead, he invites us to laugh with him at life’s frustrations, indignities and peculiar joys. His comedy is honest, self-aware and refreshingly free of sentimentality.
This Isn’t the Life I Expected is a brave, sharply written and genuinely funny piece of stand-up that deserves audiences far larger than the four fortunate people who experienced it at The Eagle Inn. Jonny Brook proves that humour can emerge from adversity without ever being defined by it, leaving his audience not feeling sorry for him, but simply delighted to have spent an evening in his company.
Review by Peter Johnson for Canal St Media