Every man in the audience stiffened as a pulsating phallus inflated on the screen in front of us at the start of the show. A premise sold as 'Man's Answer to the vagina monologues' it was always going to be an interesting hour. Herring tiptoes and vaults around the direct issue of manhood without ploughing down the heart of the matter to carefully pick out the laughs.
The most striking element of this show is how impeccably written it is. Herring’s comedic formula applies to every second of the show and leads to witty recalls to previous jokes and astounding ad libs. Without becoming crass or vulgar, Herring doesn't deviate from his self imposed mission to examine the male genitalia for the entire hour. It is therefore impressive that he drums up so much material from a singular touchy topic without generating any offence to audience members.
Unfortunately the slide-show wasn't working for my visit so the audience only caught glimpses of images. This obviously detracted from the show in the first ten minutes but once we realised Herring was professional enough to pound his comedy home without multimedia aids we felt that much more secure in the act. There weren’t as many women laughing as men, but this is completely due to a solid 60% of jokes being found in the deepest darkest depths of male observational comedy. There are still laughs for women in this show.
If you fancy an hour of intelligent observational humor whilst having a good look at your own sex drive - run for a ticket. Not many shows in Edinburgh feel quite like this one.
