July 10, 2008
Dan Atkinson previewed his forthcoming Edinburgh routine, ‘The Credit Crunch and Other Biscuits’, which is loosely structured around his attempts to solve his economic woes, including moving in with his geeky brother and going to the West country to find a wife to attract a ‘government dowry’. Despite a slow start, Atkinson’s combination of a rather bad-tempered style with self-deprecating material and an engaging stage presence won the audience over. Some of his best material was his frankly quite rude banter with the audience, which like his jokes about paedophiles and sweatshops is thoroughly amusing so long as you’re not too uptight. His take on what Yorkshire call girls might be like and reviews of sex with Les Dennis kept me laughing, and who could disagree that, while bullying might be a serious problem, the rich students of St Andrews with their ‘big, red, floppy faces’ just haven’t been bullied enough? By the time the show is polished in time for Edinburgh it will be well worth anyone’s time.
Andy Zaltzman’s Edinburgh act is unfinished, so he rehearsed material from his previous shows, promising to respond to problems proposed by the audience and thereby ‘solve all human conflict’. Zaltzman opened strongly, but his material isn’t consistently strong. Odd gags tend to punctuate an otherwise somewhat flat set; the ones that really catch you offguard are original, witty and quite outrageous: Jesus was guilty and deserved everything he got; Catholics were England’s main source of renewable energy for 200 years. The problem is that these enliven a routine that is otherwise quite ‘worthy’ – it seems Zaltzman is a bit of a tortured liberal who really does care about human rights and climate change, and he comes through as rather too earnest, before then throwing you (and possibly himself) off balance by making a joke about the Rwandan genocide. It just doesn’t quite work as a whole.
Andy Zaltzman’s Edinburgh act is unfinished, so he rehearsed material from his previous shows, promising to respond to problems proposed by the audience and thereby ‘solve all human conflict’. Zaltzman opened strongly, but his material isn’t consistently strong. Odd gags tend to punctuate an otherwise somewhat flat set; the ones that really catch you offguard are original, witty and quite outrageous: Jesus was guilty and deserved everything he got; Catholics were England’s main source of renewable energy for 200 years. The problem is that these enliven a routine that is otherwise quite ‘worthy’ – it seems Zaltzman is a bit of a tortured liberal who really does care about human rights and climate change, and he comes through as rather too earnest, before then throwing you (and possibly himself) off balance by making a joke about the Rwandan genocide. It just doesn’t quite work as a whole.