As you enter the bar you are encouraged to take a drink; do, you’ll need it. I wish I’d taken a shot, no a double, make that a triple to take the pain away. In fact I wish I’d never left the bar... the banter would probably have been better. Any old pub landlord can make sweeping generalisations and crass out-of-date jokes that weren’t even that funny when Jade Goody was alive. That is exactly how host Rick Molland started his show referring to the bald bloke sitting at the front, who would later, Rick blurted, be taking ‘Make a Wish’ donations. Believe it or not, this was him making some astute observational humour compared to the deluge of banality that followed. ‘What’s your name, where are you from?’ hung in the air as he hunted out nearly every individual or couple sitting in the audience, searching for something to throw his clichéd lines at. This was the warm-up guy.
The remaining acts were a mixed bag who all, extremely irritatingly, decided to ask the same questions to the same audience, demonstrating how ad-hoc and thrown together this comedy showcase was - none had been present while the others were performing. By far the best of a bad bunch was Chris Linburn who at least attacked his set with some gusto and provided some semi-intelligent deconstructive definitions about deconstructive comedy. The headliner, Nick Sun, confessed to only having come to this Showcase to practise which jokes not to include in his own Edinburgh show, of which there were plenty. Indifferently he admitted that he’d performed 56 gigs in Edinburgh in the past 8 days and was beyond caring what this audience thought. He’d lost his impetus, lost his drive and was not even sorry for us, the audience, losing 60 minutes of our life.
You’d have had to have spent the last ten years drifting on a frozen iceberg not to have heard of any of this material before: Edinburgh’s long running tram consternations, American tourists marvelling at anything older than 5-10 years, and your home town being described as a fat woman’s flabby gentialia. All of these ancient topics contributed to the deep freeze the audience endured during this stagnating hour of hackneyed un-hilarity. Rick Molland should next time try not to book comedians with the idea that an All Star Stand-Up Showcase is a place to come and practise then purge your failing material.
