Heart-wrenching, harrowing, ill-fated, anguished; these words would not at all be out of place in a review of a Shakespearian tragedy but alas, this was no evening of star crossed lovers and unrequited affection but an unfortunate attempt at a night of stand-up comedy.
When you base your show largely around the classic one-liner format, delivery is key but sadly this punning linguist was no showman.
I didn’t envy the poor man for having to stand in front of an audience of five, two of which he appeared to already know, and deliver what I assume was his first ever live gig, but what I really wish was that he would have tested out his material first before putting us through one of the most cringe-inducing excuses for a comedy show that I may have ever had the displeasure of sitting through. A particular low point was his series of jokes about menstruation that was met with a wave of near-silent groans from his female audience members and a look of sheer embarrassment from his only male. This was only closely to be followed by his rather bizarre rap from the perspective of a head louse.
When you base your show largely around the classic one-liner format, delivery is key but sadly this punning linguist was no showman. His main redeeming feature was that he appeared to be a very nice man, which meant we couldn’t laugh at him but neither, thanks to his jokes, could we laugh with him.
Though to be fair not all of his lines were horrendous, but the crucially placed pauses where he should have waited for the audiences’ pennies to drop were overtaken by a rattling off of jokes and puns that were often too rushed or obscure for anyone to keep up with. He would occasionally stop to look judgingly at his crowd for not musing at his jokes, often because they weren’t particularly funny, though this could have been more a sign of nerves and inexperience than the aloof reaction of a seasoned comedian with a rapier wit.
As he mentioned on several occasions that his day profession was a teacher, it only seems fair to give him a ten out of ten for effort. But sadly, his funniest joke was the one that came out of the cracker.
