Mark Thomas brought his national tour to Cambridge in October. Based on his book - As Used on the Famous Nelson Mandela - he paints a hilarious picture of his double life as undercover arms dealer and activist, campaigning to change the law. His show is an exposé of criminals breaking the law, a legal system that doesn’t work and an establishment that doesn’t want it to work. If you’ve ever seen his now defunct TV show, The Mark Thomas Comedy Product, you’ll know that what he does best is naming, shaming and annoying the hell out of people who possess far more power and influence than morals and common sense. With an igneous fusion of comedic stunts and meticulous investigative journalism, Mark seeks to uncover the criminal antics of those who cream off huge profits at the expense of the poor and less fortunate. Mark’s stage presence at the Junction in Cambridge was intimate, drawing the audience into his bizarre world with an energetic and flawless style of storytelling. He entered the Shed theatre with the quip that he didn’t know Ikea ‘do’ theatres and this kind of unpretentious witty banter continued throughout the show’s five acts. Nothing less than entertaining, Mark showed himself to be a masterful impressionist, taking on the personas of individuals encountered and imagined in his double life— policemen, MPs, arms dealers, ex-military officer turned PR man and even the Queen! The high point for me was the second act detailing a hilarious stunt that revealed the absurdity of ‘anti-terrorist’ laws which ban all un-registered demonstrations around parliament square in London. Mark and his comrades made an absolute mockery of the law by applying for lone protests en mass and sending the bureaucrats mad. Even though his observations were held together by the fabric of comedy, the end product was nothing less than a serious and engaging piece of activist theatre. After the show, the audience flocked to get their hands on his self-published pamphlet, detailing his foil on an international arms company which he claims is supplying arms to the Janjaweed militia— knowingly playing their part in genocide in Darfur, Sudan. At the beginning of his show Mark grumbled that critics try and label him and his work. But can you trust someone who wants to be taken seriously as an investigative journalist but also wants to make you laugh? Are the two compatible? Yes! By the end I understood that as a political activist you’ve got to get noticed by any means possible. If you speak the truth in a memorable and entertaining way, people might just sit up and pay attention, and you might just change the world. | 
