Like Rob Auton, I’m Yorkshire born and bred so I speak as I find. So let me say from the outset that The Sky Show is as ace as a deck of cards missing all its cards save for the four aces. As Fab as one of those lollies from the ice cream van when you were knee-high to a grasshopper. As brilliant as the town in Alabama called Brilliant.
Auton’s charmingly childlike spirit emanates and infects the whole audience in a packed room, for this has now become the must-see free show - a supernova in the Fringe galaxy.
From sublime comedic turns musing on the high street shop that sells dreams, to Top Gun and Andie MacDowell, as well as producing his own newspaper called The Sky (full of views – of the sky – rather than news), Auton is a master of spellbinding escapades into an airy and rarefied world.
He’s cumulonimble when it comes to understated but devastating comedy. His poetry is funny and touching; his verse about the Lego sunrise and sunset a particularly gladdening yet wistful tale. He’s hard not to fall a little bit in love with.
His first book of poetry is entitled In Heaven The Onions Make You Laugh. In The Sky Show, Auton affects you like an onion would in heaven and at key moments as one does here on Earth. You laugh at the funny parts, you hold your breath at the culmination of a poignant poem and a handful of people even had tears in their eyes at the end of the set, myself included. Truly beautiful and the warm feeling in my heart stayed with me hours after it was over.
If performance poetry is the new rock n roll, Mr Auton is Jarvis Cocker circa 1995. So good I gave him my last pack of Rainbow Drops. If I could rate the show in the manner it deserves, it would be the five stars above along with a bag of Magic Stars. The Sky Show is the silver lining.
