Summer Banks
archillesMilton Jones
October 17th 2007 01:57
He is plugged as this 'surreal, crazy' comedian so I went along dubiously as this is often not my thing. He publicity picture alone, going fo the zany haired wacky approach, gave me my doubts. But I have a rule not to judge anything until I've seen it live.
Coming onstage is a giant pink tuban and oversized novelty foam finger hand things - my heart sank.
This guy is fabulous. It's mostly puns and the like but they are so clever. The best ones I didn't get at first but give me a second and there would be a burst of laughter. He had great put downs, too, which surprised me.
He is of a similar breed to Tim Vine except a slower pace. I think the less urgent performance really works, except perhaps when doing a whole stage show alone. I think doing 15-20 minutes as one of a line up this would be perfect but doing a 2 hour show at quite a subdued pace can lag. Not because it's not good but because I am of a short attention span generation.
He did a couple of characters which I could have done without although it did break up the peformance with a bit of variation. Gag, gag, gag material seemed to be a bit unfashionable but I find it so much more impressive than elaborate story-telling. It just seems so much harder - simply to remember for a start!
The only other problem I had, which is entirely irrelevant and no-one's fault but my own... he reminded me quite strongly of Jeremy Hardy. This isn't a problem except I couldn't break my fixation thinking he was his lovechild. His voice, his face - everything. Weird. I'm usually wrong about these things though so he probably looks nothing like him.
Amazing though. Bloody loved the show. What a guy.
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