Alarm bells sounded early with Richard Wright’s show. Acting as his own warm-up man in the guise of Steve Mediocre was a good idea but the character failed to live up to the low expectation of his name.
It's an ambitious attempt to deliver a whole hour but the material just isn’t there.
Mediocre is, supposedly, a Northern Irish comedian with dated jokes about Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. If the name is making a point about club comedy, the delivery falls flat and what could have been a well observed ironic statement was little more than filler with a lazy accent.
This brings us to Wright’s main act. It's a confused mix - Pro-Christian, Pro-geek and Doctor Who referencing that doesn’t gel well. He has a very obvious Stewart Lee influence, no bad thing but it prevents his own stage persona from being revealed.
However, there were a few decently crafted ideas; in particular his differentiating between a geek and a nerd but he often finds himself landing in the 'fat sci-fi fan that can't get a girlfriend' arena. Regardless of what claims are made on the internet, not everyone in the world watches or cares about Doctor Who so his lampooning of the subject drew few laughs.
On the plus side Wright has an endearing stage presence. He’s the lovable social outcast with touches of the comic-book guy from The Simpsons. There aren't many who could conjure sympathy talking about the pains of simultaneous diarrhoea and constipation.
It's an ambitious attempt to deliver a whole hour but the material just isn’t there. After his show had finished he returned to the stage to end on some jokes that he couldn’t find space for. Again it stank of time-filler and emphasised how lacking in punch lines the main show was.
As a comedian, he's not ready to do the long format yet but if he makes harsh cuts on the weak filler and drops the obvious hero-aping then he soon will be.
