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Jason Byrne
Shy Pigs With Wigs Hidden in Twigs
- Apollo Theatre, London
- 17 September 2007
Bring home the bacon
Jason Byrne is an adroit craftsman of crowd participation. For the first half he barely manages to squeeze in anything he’s prepared, skilfully using answers from the audience as a platform for any current gripe he might have with self-mystifying males or unwelcoming commuters. You feel that if this was an improv night, Byrne could shine.
But it isn’t and it’s unclear what Byrne’s aiming for. Is the show’s misleading title a deliberate disavowal of creative responsibility or just something he dreamt up after a couple of flutefuls of champagne at the Royal Variety Show? Obvious targets also prove hard to satirize with any fresh insight: stop reading this if you haven’t heard a million impressions of aristo twits and pokes at Camilla and Charles.
Ostensibly, ‘Shy Pigs With Wigs Hidden in Twigs’ is simply about what’s happened in the past year of his life, but it never develops into anything more than anecdote. Meaty subjects like the pressures of fatherhood and the disillusions of long-term relationships should really be a gift to someone of the Irishman’s comic acumen. He’s guilty too of just swearing, shouting or gesticulating manically (a widespread endemic in current stand-up) when a joke threatens to fall flat.
In an up-for-it, suited crowd, Byrne’s show prompts enough wanted laughs, but little else. I wish he had given more thought to where wigs, twigs and pigs might have led him.Julien Hunt
