The sad inevitability of comedian Jerry Sadowitz’s cancellation

Comedian Jerry Sadowitz was scheduled to play two nights at Edinburgh comedy venue The Pleasance during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, but on Saturday (13th August), the venue cancelled his second performance at short notice (Spectator,?Times). The Pleasance moved quickly to denounce Mr Sadowitz’s first gig, loftily declaring that it “[did] not align with our values”, “ha[d] no place on the Festival” and that it had been so offensive as to make people feel “unsafe”. (This, by the way, after insisting – “apparently with a straight face” as Michael Deacon put it for the?Telegraph?– that the Pleasance “is a venue that champions freedom of speech”).

Coming as it does in the immediate aftermath of an attempt on Salman Rushdie’s life, the purely bureaucratic cancellation of a misanthropic, self-loathing comedian cum magician with a penchant for exposing his penis might look like "an almost comically bathetic damp squib of a sequel", as Simon Evans put it. (Spiked). But for the?Guardian’s comedy critic, Brian Logan, it was a “watershed moment”. Many previous “cancel culture versus comedy furores”, he said, “involved powerful acts” with TV shows – “your Dave Chappelles, Ricky Gervaises and Jimmy Carrs”. This, however, was something different: “a low-status, stubbornly niche show getting pulled hours before its performance, thus denying hundreds of ticket-holders their chance to see it”.

TRIGGERnometry podcast host Konstantin Kisin thought it was a cancellation waiting to happen. He recalls his own ‘watershed’ moment back in 2018 when Nica Burns, the Director of the Edinburgh Comedy Awards, launched the Edinburgh Festival with an agenda-setting?speech. She began by describing the birth of alternative comedy in the UK in the 1980s as a kind of ‘moral epiphany’. Forget about changes to technique and delivery style, she seemed to be saying: what was most important about that era was the fact that comics had made the “conscious decision that it was unacceptable to tell jokes that were racist, homophobic and sexist”.

Having politicised the history of modern British comedy in this way, Nica went on to claim that “today, it is the woke movement which is setting an ever-evolving agenda as it seeks to establish a clear marker for what is unacceptable”. To her, this was an “exciting” and “transformational moment” for comedy, and she was “looking forward to comedy’s future in the woke world!”.

Tellingly, nobody in the room protested. “In fact”, says Konstantin, “much seal-like clapping ensued from the ‘shakers and movers’ in attendance who were, it seems, also looking forward to comedy’s future in the woke world”. That's why, for him, the ongoing cancellation of Jerry Sadowitz is more of a “sad inevitability than a surprise”.

And what about basic comedic principles – doesn’t the notion of an onstage persona count anymore? As Andrew Doyle was quick to point out, the Pleasance’s statement that “opinions such as those displayed on stage by Sadowitz are not acceptable”, displayed a worrying lack of understanding of the difference between jokes – performed by a persona – and opinions – held by the person performing the persona. (Unherd). To denounce Sadowitz’s onstage persona as racist, sexist, or homophobic, he said, "makes about as much sense as condemning Macbeth for his ruthless ambition". So will the Pleasance from now on only accept bookings from comics who think, vote and act in a similar manner to the venue’s board of trustees? Perhaps they should save themselves the booking fees and simply install a giant mirror on the venue’s stage.