Has John Hegley stopped making a spectacle of himself? The usual references to glasses are still present and correct, but this time they are overshadowed by deeper emotional focal points.
The people's poet, Luton faction, can turn on a sixpence from misanthropic to philanthropic. A psychiatrist would have a field day if Hegley ever stayed still long enough to settle on a couch. Onstage his angular body is forever darting about, playing a mandolin or guitar to accompany his Costello-meets-Morrissey yodel or simply pointing a schoolteacherly finger at a coughing fan.
Hegley's tangled paternal relationship takes some unravelling. He recalls his dad making him cry, then elsewhere he confesses to sending his parents a banner saying he loved them. They wrote back that he needed help.
Most moving is Mything My Father, when he tells of making amends in a Greek church for missing his late father's requiem: "The candle I set light to now I set alight for him. Beeswax I imagine and exceptionally slim."
He can't be serious for long, though. He follows this triumphant crowd-silencer with a hilariously odd ode about trying to get off with a woman.
Much of the set is familiar, but newer pieces are reminders that Hegley can shoot off at rewarding tangents. A meeting with builders resulted in an effortlessly infectious poem about safety officers with the impeccable line: "He troubleshoots, the rubble shoots."
Of course, dogs still gnaw at his psyche. Most of the second half is taken up with a cheapskate slide show of the audience's canine sketches. Hegley's followers certainly earn their entertainment. They even have to come up with a ditty about Hammersmith, not the world's easiest rhyme. But this is a small bone of contention. A mongrel of a show, but one with plenty of bite.
John Hegley - John's Journals
