The idea of geek chic is a funny thing. In many cases, it involves lots of confident, attractive, endearing people labelled as ‘geeky’ for the sake of typecasting, rather than the actual reality of a number crunching, socially awkward and probably isolated person. Helen Arney’s ambitious attempts to fuse musical comedy and scientific rigour, complete with lengthy descriptions and enthusiastic PowerPoint, definitely puts her within the former. She has an endearing stage presence and a great voice when she takes to her ukulele – the show’s conclusion even sees her leading the audience through an attempt to sing all the zeroes in a googolplex, and doing so with real warmth.
However, warmth isn’t enough to carry the audience through an hour of stand-up. Lengthy themes related to mathematical concepts relied more on exposition than actual laughs – rather than combining comedy and science, long descriptive build-ups are used in a way separate from clear punchline moments. She clearly knows her way around a pun, showing a deft technique throughout, but boxing her material within scientific topics hinders a natural delivery. A section on Schroedinger’s Cat which, after a long period of description, is contrasted with online ‘Lolcats’ is too self-consciously reliant on the humour of existing memes to actually reflect her own comic technique. Elsewhere, the constant tracking of her comedic career on a graph depicting her belief that her parents are not always proud of her, generates more awkwardness than laughs.
The fact that her material sometimes subsumes her obvious talent within stock tropes of ‘kookiness’ is a real shame. If she were to focus on her musical talents over narrowing herself to science, she could be on to her winner. A closing number about cryogenically freezing her boyfriend has great hooks, sharp wit and what is crucially lacking from the remainder of the show – big punchlines.
