It is very hard to know how to describe Gareth Morinan’s show. It’s filed under comedy in the Fringe Guide and was indeed very funny in parts. However, the comedian (actor? speaker?) spends a large part of the performance telling us not to laugh and encouraging us to leave via the door shaped object at the back. Indeed, he began the show by explaining why an audience shouldn’t find small people inherently funny and suggested that any laughter would be based on their expectations more than his actions.
The bulk of Morinan’s show is about the troubles faced by a small man - that and basically ranting about the fact that Ricky Gervais cut him out of Life’s Too Short. Morinan does deliver several hilarious moments, but his opening declaration made it very difficult to know when to laugh. This confusion is the big letdown of the show, though it was deliberate. Making an audience feel uneasy doesn’t maximise enjoyment.
His discussion of Life’s Too Short, why it was awful and how it set the non-existent campaign against height-ism back several years was genuinely interesting. He points out that we make jokes and judgements about a person’s height in ways that this generation would never dream of doing about a person’s race or sex. The show was in this way unexpectedly powerful in a way comedy rarely is - if it was comedy.