Some comedians give you a neat beginning, middle, and end. Paul Williams gives you something far messier: chaotic, playful, and unexpectedly moving. The pièce de résistance is a finale that threads together almost every gag from earlier in the hour into a riot of sound, sight, and silliness, somehow weaving praise for Timothée Chalamet’s Bob Dylan, the coolness of sunglasses, and the success of Lindsey Jacobellis into an emotional letter of self-affirmation. It is heartfelt enough to land with weight, and ridiculous enough to make you laugh through it.
The show’s loose spine is the story of his life, starting in his hometown of Nelson, a place so integral to his identity that its mere mention earns roars from what feels like half the town’s youth crammed into the audience. A beautiful song follows, gently assuring us (in a tone that is both tongue-in-cheek and oddly sincere) that Nelson is “definitely not racist” and could even be a place where happiness is possible.
Structurally, the set does not march in a straight line so much as wander through unexpected detours, turning the lights off for a ghost story, slipping into the crowd, and even inserting a deliberately out-of-place “what happens next?” gag complete with a mock intermission. It is a kind of organised chaos, where the lack of obvious narrative flow makes the eventual payoffs feel sharper and more satisfying.
There is a segment late in the show about reviews, good, bad, and baffling, that cuts surprisingly deep. He points out the arbitrariness of a single person’s opinion, and the absurdity of letting that define your sense of worth. As a reviewer, it is a little disarming to be reminded that our words cannot (and should not) be the metric of someone’s talent, but it is also a challenge: as other reviewers before me have contemplated, are we assessing whether we “liked it”, or whether the performer achieved what they set out to do? In this case, I would argue he did both.
There are moments where the pace sags, and a couple of stories feel slightly overextended. However, those dips are small compared to the strength of his audience control, handling the crowd’s energy with the kind of ease that makes it all feel intentional. That trust he builds early pays off, allowing him to play with form, structure, and tone without losing the room.
If the point of the show is partly to prove that chaos, vulnerability, and laughter can sit in the same space, then consider that mission accomplished. And if reviews are, as he says, arbitrary, well, take this arbitrary fact with you: this is a show worth seeing, and an ending worth staying for. I couldn’t recommend it enough!
Paul Williams – Don’t Look at Me is running until 24 August (not 12, not 19) at Upstairs at Assembly Roxy.
Buy tickets here.
Image courtesy of Matt Stronge provided to The Student as press material.
