Graham Dickson: No One Deserves This More Than You review – dependably funny desperation

Few figures are more dependably funny than the delusional, disappointed actor, acclaim and self-respect forever and tantalisingly out of his grasp. Ricky Gervais gave us one version in Extras. Now Graham Dickson takes time out from his improv career (he performs, as have so many other great soloists before him, with Austentatious) to give us this one-man offering.
He might equally have borrowed his title from Bebe Cave’s The Screen Test elsewhere on the fringe. The conceit is that Dickson’s show never gets going, because his agent keeps calling, inviting him to audition for a superior production. So the show is paused, and Dickson – or the charming, burbling neurotic he plays here – records a self-tape, with help from willing members of his audience.
That help is (almost) always forthcoming, because the Free Association man is just so lovable, channelling that Hugh Grant-alike, well-heeled but self-deprecating type that is so easy, and often so fatal, to fall for. OK, so he’s made a fringe show about, er, moths that he feels duty-bound to deliver. But really he’s just so puppyishly desperate for his break, you can’t begrudge him when the chance arises to try out for a Game of Thrones knock-off, then a kitchen sink drama, then an advert for big oil.
With other roles read by the audience, Dickson performs his parts to camera, with the image beamed on to an upstage screen. Occasionally these sections, and the joke of Dickson’s finicky line readings and perfectionism, outstay their welcome. Arguably the character’s pathetic-ness, so instantly evident, might have worked better as a slow reveal. At the performance I attended, there was some uncertainty around things going wrong deliberately, and otherwise.
But more often the show’s tragicomic arc, as Dickson’s desperation (for a job, for his father’s approval) breaks into the open, tends towards lively amusement. And, in a show about a man struggling to find an outlet for his talents, Dickson’s skills – for improv, crowd work, toothsome charm, and measuring out just a teardrop of emotional significance into his silliness solution – are amply on display.