Frankie Boyle, Music Hall, Aberdeen, review: Dense with purposeful provocation and first-rate comedy

“Why is it always comedy that brings out the worst in people?” implores Frankie Boyle, tone of seething exasperation bleeding through. It’s a double-edged comment. On one level, he’s clearly frustrated with those who feel a need to take offence at his more controversial jokes when there are far greater evils in the world going unchallenged. On the other, you get the feeling he revels in it; that he himself is that “worst”, the most willing to blurt out the unsayable, and the unlikely giggle he occasionally lapses into despite himself suggests he knows he’s walking a tightrope on the edge of acceptable taste.

But we’re all here to see that great tightrope act. For anyone willing to engage with Boyle’s work as something beyond a succession of sharply turned gags on pet subjects like institutional child abuse and the precisely balanced blend of cancer and sexual assault he wishes upon anyone brave enough to heckle, there’s huge intelligence at work. Always masterful with a punchline, in the past Boyle’s shows have disappointed slightly, in that they’ve gone for a rapid series of transgressive laughs without building to an overall point.

For this new tour, named with simple beauty Hurt Like You’ve Never Been Loved, the point has arrived, and very welcome it is. Those familiar with the Glaswegian comedian’s recent newspaper columns will be aware he speaks with a (perhaps unexpected) degree of compassion for the disadvantaged and comparable levels of naked disgust for those he sees as being corrupt or hypocritical. Boyle punches hard, but he punches up.

There feels like a high level of truth over artifice when he appears to allow himself anger; partly showing his disgust at abuses of power, and partly because he seems to view people as so docile that they’d rather get worked up over what some guy in a purple suit says in his comedy show.

The show is only an hour long, but it’s dense with purposeful provocation and first-rate comedy whose laughter is sharpened by that sense of transgression Boyle does so well. He weaves in a joke about #piggate, naturally, and manages to tie it to the Raoul Moat saga. Or there’s a self-confessed “dark” segment which he warns us of in advance, where he elaborates his thoughts on elite power in Britain. His delivery is dispassionate and dry, but the timing and lack of fear is first rate. These are enlivened here and there by a credible accent or a grinning double-take to match Eric Morecambe.

As the show climaxes, a sense of personal honesty creeps in to match the emotional truth; about his youthful alcoholism and his enduring love for Bill Hicks. Headlines detailing Boyle’s supposed bad taste may not agree, but his comedy bears the same sense of essential humanity as Hicks’, and his brutality is an era-defining mirror held up, rather than a blunt weapon. Or, as he correctly puts it: “I’m a professional comedian; there is a point.”

On tour till 11 December (frankieboyle.com)