To give a show this title, considering the easy barbs that could be made at its expense, is perhaps brave. To then produce a show utterly devoid of wit or true inventiveness to go with this title is just, well, moronic. The duo Ste Price and Tim Wilderspin, performing one set of stand-up and one set in character each, clearly believe that by being as bizarre as possible their comedy is exciting and innovative. It is neither.
The show began with Ste Price awkwardly fiddling with the microphone stand whilst desperately failing to engage the audience. Most of his set revolved around trying to satirise observational comedy, a worthy target but only if done with sharp humour and no little skill, neither of which Price possesses.
Next up was oddball tramp Nigel Death (Wilderspin). Nigel is the leering drunk in your carriage on the last train home that you hope doesn’t kick off or take a piss in the aisle. Well it turns out it would be far worse if he got up and started a stand-up set. A particular low point was when he put in a set of fangs and begun thrusting his grotty crotch into the face of a woman in the audience. This was ostensibly meant as a mockery of the current craze for ‘hunky vampires’ but just came across as pathetic.
Price then returned to the stage in the guise of Simeon Gold, an irritating ham actor intended to be a parody of haughty thespians but carried out with none of the requisite ability. He proceeded to act out a sequence of short plays each with an overblown message attached. The last one told of how Lennon and McCartney met and formed the Beatles, during which Gold routinely - but not deliberately - mixed up which way round the two musicians played their respective instruments. The moral was some conceited nonsense about the 1960s counterculture. It should’ve been to learn your left from your right.
In very relative terms, the show’s strongest section was Wilderspin’s stand-up. Considering his partner’s distaste for the form, his set oddly consisted of observational if slightly maniacal comedy. His riffs on organ donor forms, call centre workers and Edwin Starr’s ‘War’ were passable but nothing new or particularly promising.
The title seems to suggest that there is some level of knowingness behind the bizarre idiocy. Even shambolic acts can be hilarious if the audience feels the comedians onstage could get it right if they so chose to. Yet this doesn’t hold true for material this poorly written and performed. Multi-Levelled Morons is a desperate, tedious, and embarrassing mess.
