A man entered the stage in a banana costume. This spoke volumes for the rest of the show. Lloyd Langford is an introvert, has been taking life too seriously, and has made a vow to do more silly things. He had chosen wisely, for the banana is unequivocally the funniest of fruits.
This amiable Welshman, slightly hunched in his costume, had the audience relaxed as he shares a collection of well selected anecdotes. Langford has a feel for the obscure and the incongruous. He has a well-honed eye for discovering ridiculous examples of celebrity lust for the spotlight, while his boyish obsession with tales of men battling sharks and boxers taking on bears adds charm to the evening.
Langford recounts his latest efforts to spice up life with more daring and dangerous activities. Photographing his fellow passengers on public transport shows how daring doesn’t need to go on holiday to find danger. Accosting German school children in museums definitely qualified as a stupid thing to do. Langford shares with us the inspiration he gains from the greats who put their lives in danger seemingly for the hell of it.
Langford’s more bawdy material might turn off a few punters; jokes about the role of beer in the Rwandan genocide came off as a bit unjustifiably tasteless. His final tale about sexual encounters from last year’s festival probably had a degree of detail that we could have done without. However, the majority of his material picked up lost ground from these low lights and gained our forgiveness.
Langford is a natural storyteller; he brings little ego and lots of laughs to the performance, ultimately providing an overall enjoyable evening of entertainment with a talking banana.
