Lord of the Dance Settee

Richard Herring spent years trying to justify stand-up by wrestling with heavy subjects like mortality, religion, and fascism. Here, he gives up on having a grand theme altogether, choosing instead to lean into stubborn pedantry and uncool silliness. The show takes its name from a childhood mishearing of the hymn Lord of the Dance—a trivial mistake Stewart Lee once dismissed on television as not being worth talking about, which Herring takes as license to stretch across an hour and a half of deliberate nonsense.

Filmed at London’s Bloomsbury Theatre in May 2015 and released by Go Faster Stripe, the set arrived at a transitional moment for Herring. He had recently become a father and was preparing to take his first break from the Edinburgh Fringe in over a decade to perform his entire back catalogue in London.

On stage, that transition translates into an obsession with aging and an outright refusal to act dignified. He scrutinizes a fast-food worker whose nametag reads Dave Manager, wondering whether Manager is an occupation or a surname. He attempts to recreate an ambitious piece of physical slapstick he invented as a teenager, fully aware his middle-aged joints cannot handle the impact. He also recalls heckling 1980s game-show host Ted Rogers, only to realize with horror that Rogers was younger then than Herring is now.

Reviews were largely positive, though several critics noted that the relaxed, theme-free approach lacked the punch of his earlier concept hours.