Searching For Stevieman is a show based on a promising and absurdly amusing concept; a parody of recent documentary film Searching For Sugarman focused on the bizarre rise to fame of a failed comedian in the Amazon rainforest. Indeed, even the opening parody-song, in which the words of singer Rodriguez were switched from “Sugarman” to “Stevieman”, held some promise. However, a few mumbled apologies about lack of material quickly dashed any hopes of hilarity. The claims even seemed unbelievable, mostly since the comedian stood next to a projected screen populated with numerous original film clips that had clearly taken at least some preplanning and consideration, but ended up setting the scene for what was to be nothing more than an uncomfortable 40 minutes.
The show loosely followed Steve Andrews imagined career path into and out of comedy before discovering his popularity with an Amazonian tribe. It wasn’t that the jokes along the way were particularly poorly delivered, or of bad taste; they were simply unfunny. Whether they were groan-inducing puns or unoriginal Scottish stereotypes, it was clear that the show was based on those fabled “few jokes from the 70’s” that Andrews repeatedly referred to and was in desperate need of revamping. There were some attempts at absurdity that simply fell flat on their face as they had no punch line or comedic set-up. An embarrassing 5 minutes ensued when we were introduced to the obscure world of aquatic hand-mime, which seemed to be a way of satirising the Fringe itself but was brought to an abrupt end after the third repetition of the phrase failed to induce any laughter.
What was a genuinely intelligent and potentially amusing concept for a show ultimately descended into the wrong kind of chaos; the audience was left with the sense that after coming up with the title, Andrews had simply hoped that the lightly amusing word play would carry him through the remaining half an hour, but was sadly very wrong.
