Blimey, Tony Law is funny. Naturally funny. There are plenty of joke tellers at the Fringe, who put their technical skills on show and produce clever bits of material that are painstakingly crafted and mechanically arranged. Law doesn’t tell jokes. He doesn’t tell jokes to the extent that he marks up the occasional moments when he does – ‘there’s number three… ah, whatever.’ Law doesn’t provide anything as easily digestible or logical as a joke, what we get instead is a flood of nonsensical rambling, ironic self-lampooning, deconstructions where jokes would normally be. All delivered at about 120 decibels. As he ploughs onto the stage, dressed like a 1920s explorer, he yells ‘Alright, let’s kick this show in the balls!’. And, spectacularly, he does.
His ability to maintain such a frenzied pace of ideas at such a shattering volume is a thing of wonder. Whether comparing children to trolls, assessing the practicalities of a viking raid, or pulling apart the concept of banter, these topics are circumnavigated rather than actually spoken about, as if looked through in peripheral vision. We instead get a series of barks, yells, asides and some impressive facial expressions that reveal nothing at all, except for their production of delirious laughter from The Stand’s packed lunchtime crowd. A finale loosely centred around the idea of elephants, complete with video, props and a sing-along, sums up everything he does best: creating a storm of daft ideas that heap up on top of each other. When thought back to, it is never entirely clear in your mind what exactly you were laughing at.
Law is an insanely charismatic performer, capable of pulling off feats of genius from another realm. In one particularly good middle section, he plays a minor-key steel drum, attempting to see if he can match the success of musical comedians. He is more than fine as he is.
