Overcoming Depression

At the Bearcat Comedy Club, October 2009

More Dag Soras videos

Dag Sørås: Outside the Comfort Zone
Live Review

It's near the end of a long festival for both myself and Norwegian comedian Dag Soras. It has been telling on the both of us and at times neither of us want to be here.

His regular asides, to his audience of eight, about the way his festival has gone and the way his cumbersome set is going tonight, actually provide some of the best moments. One example crops up when he is dealing with religion (one of his favourite subjects that he shoots at as if it were a fish in a barrel) where likens the people handing out flyers after screenings of The Passion of the Christ to Fringe flyerers – only the Christians have more hope in their eyes.

In between the disparaging asides and the moments where Soras stares into the middle distance, perhaps contemplating why his material hasn't matched up to his intellect, he takes some blunt pot-shots at the orthodox and the mainstream.

He's disconcerted that some of his friends think CCTV is a good idea, what about his right to do drugs, use prostitutes and throw midgets around? Even written down that line seems to carry more humour than his, at best, nonchalant delivery. What's disappointing here is his ability to raise a subject and then do it little justice. Later he conjectures, as so many have before him, that children should play Nazis and Jews rather than Cowboys and Indians so that they can be up to date in their genocide, he tops off this with another oft observed irony about playing Palestinians and Israelis.

Too often Soras wants to go for the jugular (almost literally in a routine about sex with dead animals) and down route one when there are flashes of dexterity that suggest he is capable of more. Sadly the show's title, Outside The Comfort Zone, becomes more and more uncomfortable in its resonance as the set wears on and its end is greeted with relief by performer and audience alike.

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