Trevor Lock: Fringe 2009 review

Five minutes in and I've been accused of eating a whole chain of restaurants. "Pizza Hut, Pizza Express, Domino's, you've eaten them all. It's a Domino effect really."

 

Another first rower is invited into Lock's one-man, one-way comedy conversation, asked to envisage jumping into an imaginary hoodlum's hoodie hole, which turns out to be a cave, where he starts crying, the tears form a river, which in turn flow out the cave mouth. Or hoodie hole.

 

Confused? Maybe a little. Laughing? Absolutely. Maybe you had to be there. In fact, you definitely had to be there. It's all pretty hectic, really.

 

After every other burst of surreal ideas, what-ifs and wordplay, Lock turns on his heel and lifts his glasses up his nose, smiling at the crowd wryly.

 

There's a cocky confidence underneath the mania, primarily improvised and audience-based, with half the show ending up revolving around these imaginary hoodlums, one spectator accidentally elbowing another, and other spun-out, off the cuff remarks.

 

But when the seemingly only slightly planned material comes, it does so in an equally absurd and hilarious way, climaxing (for want of a better phrase) in Lock pretending to masturbate into a fish bowl. Again, maybe you just had to be there.

 

Perhaps that's the appeal - you have to see the show to get the humour, to feel the atmosphere, to laugh along - you leave the show thinking, how did I end up laughing so much, his quips evaporating in the retelling.

 

If there's one flaw to point out, (and it's a minor one, and a flaw inherent in this improvised, surreal style of comedy) it's that the rhythm of jokes and ideas can ebb and flow, with some minutes being noticeably slower, others flying by.

 

What's more, if the audience are boring, or less than receptive, you could easily envisage a few sluggish, uncomfortable minutes in amongst the belly laughs.

 

The multitalented Star Stories um... star, who was once Russell Brand's whipping boy on 6Music, is also putting on a self-penned play at the festival called "The One And Many", described as 'a romantic philosophical comedy' - and if I wasn't too busy eating restaurant chains, I'd already be there.

 

Ali Plumb