Nick Mohammed’s expert impressions have seen him take the role of Mr. Swallow, a lecturer whose ‘restricting theme’, as he calls it, is numbers. Immediately striking about Mr. Swallow is his heavy Yorkshire accent, along with his very camp and dramatic persona. To anyone unfamiliar with Mohammed’s work as a character comedian, his character is played to the point where he is convincingly real.
Mohammed leads the lecture with his powerpoint presentation on different topics all to do with numbers. At first his character seems fairly dim witted and his chaotic obsession with numbers sees him impress no further than working out the cumulative effect of receiving all the gifts from the song, the 12 days of Christmas. This was then briefly followed by him attempting to recreate the numbers round on Countdown with apparent failure.
Fully in character, he dabbled with audience interaction. When trying to explain how his mother was applying for Countdown he went on a huge tangent. These tangents heighten the sense of realism of this irritating and bizarre character who has no sense of manners; his next interaction saw him guessing the women’s ages in the crowd whilst arguing it wasn’t not offensive.
Mr.Swallow is briefly exchanged by Mohammed during a brief interlude where he impersonates his near senile, mind bendingly boring accountant. This teaser showed that he has expert comic ability and made me want to see Mohammed take on more characters within the hour.
As the show returns to Mr. Swallow it slowly appears that he is not the idiot he appeared to be. His understanding of numbers is insanely good. He made up to the skeptics in the crowd with this genius switcharound. It is these nuances to the character that make him a unique creation.
Being in Nick Mohammed’s show is an experience that will be hard to find an equivalent of at the Fringe, but, be warned, he is not a character for everyone. If he took on the role of more characters it would expand his audience but as it stands Mohammed has done an excellent job with Mr. Swallow.
