A Midlife Crisis: Live!

Though billed as standup, Lee Fenwick’s bruised alter-ego Mick Sergeant is more the fodder of a tragi-comedy. “What’s the opposite of life-affirming? Oh, that’s right, the truth.” By that logic, then, the truth is messy and confusing and ultimately strikes a fairly dismal note.

Sergeant is an established recurring character in Fenwick’s repertoire, but there’s only a vague sense of the unemployed Geordie ship-builder’s rich history sketched in A Midlife Crisis. Rather, the show is a stilted tirade of trials, segueing abruptly from Sergeant’s Success Journal (“Made macaroni and none of it stuck to the pan”), to an overlong interview with audience members for the job of eating a bourbon. Somehow a disgusted riposte to an article in Cath Kidston Magazine is roped in: “No one should have to suffer the agony of a room-temperature towel!” 

What’s more consistent is Fenwick’s utter embodiment of his character. Sergeant’s demeanour, thin moustache and buttoned-up shirt are striking in their aggressive orderliness, but the world he inhabits is less so. When Sergeant takes a surreal phone call from "society", audio glitches make it utterly unlistenable. 

Though a failed rendering of an abject failure should be doubly depressing, Sergeant’s A Midlife Crisis simply lacks real conviction. The evident pleasure Fenwick takes in his character’s wordy tangents assures you he’ll be all right. A “Marianna trench of shit” is just Sergeant’s way of saying "home, sweet home".