“I can’t play to geeks like you for ever. I wanna charge £65 a ticket and walk across the stage, just noticing things!”
It was a brave yet knowing mission statement from Tony Law. Yet with his braces, beard and starey eyes, he still played the surrealist card well.
At points his monologue diverted into story-based narratives that, jokingly or otherwise, Law hinted the big bucks lay with. He may, of course, have been being ironic, taunting the audience with the prospect of producing mainstream comedy that pollutes the likes of the O2 Arena. It was genuinely hard to tell.
Thankfully though, the oddness with which Law made his name still dominated – think early Eddie Izzard or even The Mighty Boosh if either cared less about “traditional” comedy rules. One minute our hero was time travelling, introducing leaning to the Persians, proclaiming himself to be the first to eat a pumpkin, the next, gulp, flying through space with a bear and an owl-cat.
“When you have no jokes, it’s hard work,” he gasped at one point. And you have to hope it keeps being this hard if the only alternative is mediocrity.
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