WITH 2022 on the horizon, Reginald D Hunter is not necessarily looking towards the future with hope, more with a sense of caution bred from hard lessons learned.
“I usually have my goals and aspirations, but I’m reluctant about making them now,” Reg tells me, during our Monday afternoon interview.. “It feels like the world might lose it’s mind again. Covid nearly destroyed my industry - I always thought the government would do that.
“It feels like the world is a snow globe that’s been given a good shake, and we’re waiting for the flakes to settle, but still don’t know where they will fall. It’s very hard to make plans as the last three to four years haven’t been like any years previously. At this point next year, the new strain of Covid might be the Optimus Prime variant. Look out! The Optimus Prime variant will get you!”
‘Less afraid’
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Reg’s reticence about making any New Year resolutions is understandable given, as he admits, he found the third lockdown extremely tough. “I lost my mind so badly I never thought I’d be seen again,” he admits.
“Most of my life, I didn’t think I was susceptible to anything,” he says. “As a kid, I thought I’d never die. I used to think mental health issues were for other people. I flew through the first and second lockdowns, but the third, I’m not sure what happened. My father had not long died, and everything seemed to have a pointlessness to it, it was futile.
“I’d never previously thought that way, even in my worst moods. My mind was always a slice of pizza away from feeling better. I’d been asked to act in a film and I was supposed to have a conversation with the director. I had to stop myself from saying to him, ‘Don’t hire me. I’m a mess!’, but it’s amazing what a good night’s sleep will do, and I was OK after that, but for a while I thought… It’s just human. The more time you spend by yourself, the mind starts to play tricks on you. Now? I think I’m less afraid, and I’m sitting on two years worth of jokes.”
Gorging on Irish Stew
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Despite his reluctance to predict the future, one thing Reg is looking forward to in 2022 is coming to Ireland - and to the Róisín Dubh - for social, political, and culinary reasons.
“I took a train to Scotland recently, and on the way I had a ham and cheese sandwich. It was so bland that for a moment I hated all white people! How do you take ingredients like cheese, ham, tomato, and lettuce, and make them taste like nothing? Not even bad, just nothing!?! So when I get to Ireland, I’ll be getting some Irish Stew. My mother used to make Irish Stew. Nobody else in the South made Irish Stew. I don’t know where she got it from, but she used to make it. So when I come over to Ireland, I gorge on that for the first couple of days.”
Reg will also appreciate the chance to get away from Brexit Britain for a while. “It’s weird,” he says, of the country he has lived in for more than 20 years. “It seems the more Boris Johnson f***s up, the more people still get mad with Jeremy Corbyn! I’m an outsider. I don’t have as much history invested over here, but English friends are in a state of depression about here, like what I’m in when I look back at the United States.
“When did we get it into our heads that we don’t observe the rule of law when it suits us? In the 1980s, your career could be destroyed if it was alleged you knew a Russian communist. There were all these allegations about Trump and Russian influence, and Republicans were like, ‘Who cares?’”
However, Galway will provide Reg with some relief from the chaos of geopolitics. “I always have a rollicking good time at the Róisín Dubh,” he says. “it’s one of my favourite venues. It’s always a place that is conducive for rollicking.”
‘Volatile subject matter’
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At those Róisín Dubh shows, Reg will perform his new show, Bombe Shuffleur, which he says will involve him “juggling volatile subject matter” and trying to keep them in the air “without them exploding”.
“If I’m right, I will dance right through it,” he says. “If I don’t, a bomb will go off. It’s a test for me. If I’ve been eating bland food for two years, I've decided to load it up with tabasco sauce. I’m giving myself a chance to eat food that is seasoned.”
That spice has always made Reg a provocative, challenging, and insightful comic, never afraid to set foot on difficult terrain. Yet, over the last five years, he has noticed how comedy audiences have changed, and how this marks a much wider social shift in the way people gather and process information.
“Comedy has become more difficult, and it’s not because of cancel culture,” he says. “The rules aren’t the rules anymore. You cannot assume, when you go onstage, that everybody knows what you know, reads the same newspapers or consumes the same media as you. People’s information has become customised, they have customised how they receive information.
“That was always how I wrote my comedy. I wanted people to take it home with them, as it was about issues that matter to all of us, that way you have a chance to be interesting, but now the value systems are individualised. You tell a joke and one half of the room is ‘Aww No!’, and the other half is ‘You said it right!’”
Uncle Fluffy
The Covid pandemic has also changed comedy for Reg, albeit on a more personal level. He still wishes to challenge and be provocative, but also give audiences an escape and some hope.
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“During the lockdowns I found it was actually good to be able to take my mind off of comedy,” he says. “Before that, I was always ‘on’. No matter what the situation, or conversation, I always had half a mind looking for the jokes in it. To have time off from always having to do that was great.
"For the first twelve months I was able to watch the news like a regular person. I think I have toned down my darker edge. People need a laugh now and their spirits kept up. I’m not going to go all Uncle Fluffy on the audience, but I’m not going to let them go home feeling bad.”
Reginald D Hunter performs Bombe Shuffleur in the Róisín Dubh on Friday January 28 and Monday January 31. The January 28 show is sold out, but tickets are on sale for January 31 via www.roisindubh.net
