What separates Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I Am from an average stand-up show is everything that has come before it. Tom Rosenthal’s career as a comic actor hangs over the performance. He knows we know him — but not necessarily for his own stand-up. We arrive with preconceptions: we think something of him before the show, during the show, and, most terrifyingly, after the show.
That sense of caution runs through every moment as Rosenthal tells us about himself — exploring his recent autism diagnosis, his Jewish heritage, his career, his relationship with his famous father, and his status as a so-called “nepo baby.” Threaded through it all is a comparison to Arctic Monkeys’ Alex Turner, who made two great albums he could never quite follow. Rosenthal approaches all of this with a hyper-awareness of the audience’s gaze, as if every confession and every joke is filtered through the question: what do they think of me now?
Many of the jokes come from the tension between wanting to be liked and pretending not to care. Every time he makes a sincere point about creating something beautiful regardless of what people think, he immediately undercuts it with a plea for reassurance — that we like him, that we think he’s funny. Rosenthal anticipates everything we might say about him — the post-show chat, the criticisms — and takes that second-guessing to absurd extremes. At one point, he even invents fake audience members who complain about the show upon leaving the theatre. The bit brilliantly captures how mad you can make yourself by trying to imagine what everyone else thinks of you.
Protecting your reputation is another anxiety Rosenthal shares. He talks about how maybe Alex Turner should have stopped after two great albums rather than risk making anything worse. But you can’t do that. Rosenthal knows it, and the show becomes a kind of acceptance of having to keep putting yourself out there. Despite all his anxiety, there’s something laid-back about the performance. He takes his time to explain his points without worrying about pelting the audience with punchlines — though there are still plenty across the full hour. At one point, he jokes about how exhausting it would be, for us as much as for him, if he were hilarious 100 per cent of the time.
He has the appearance and performance skill of a well-practised actor, but with his slicked-back hair, white shirt and black trousers — echoing Turner’s look — he presents a cartoonishly over-polished figure: an actor who’s had success and now seems oddly removed from the real world, a world he can no longer return to. In a way, the look itself pre-empts how he thinks we will see him — another way of saying, I know what you’re thinking.
Rosenthal always manages to make us feel like we’re in on the joke. Despite the fact that most audience members will never experience what he has, he knows we understand the same paradoxes and fears of being seen. He constantly reassures us that he likes us, calling us his “favourite audience” because we laugh at his favourite jokes — a gesture that lets us know we’re seeing him in the way he wants to be seen.
For all his worry about being judged, he seems finally at ease, figuring it out in real time — and in the process, delivering an hour packed with great jokes.
Written by: Tom Rosenthal
Published with The Reviews Hub
Rosie Wood 
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