Seymour Mace: Fringe 2012
Live Review
Stand 2

One of the formats that’s attracted the most buzz in Edinburgh over the past couple of years is Set List, the improvised stand-up game where solitary comedians must ad lib their routine based only on odd subject headings they have never seen before.

It’s a real challenge that can leave even the best comics floundering… but Seymour Mace is performing more than half an hour of the same thing every day this Fringe. Where’s his Sky Atlantic contact?

The show is called  Squeg because, like many festival performers, he was unprepared when the programme deadline came around so plumped for something meaningless. Like fewer festival performers, he’s still unprepared midway through the festival, so asks his audience to write down odd questions and ideas, around which he riffs.

It might be lazy, but when it results in the free-flowing hilarity it did this lunchtime, that’s of no importance. Today that journey takes us to a Joy Division/Russ Abbot mashup, racism as applied to Gummi Bears and a recurring idea that we will all one day surrender ourselves to robots, which was set up in the prepared preamble but taken in new directions once the adlibbing starts.

The topics, though, are irrelevant. What counts is Mace’s apparently effortless ability to make them all stupidly funny. He sets up a great rapport with the audience – the unamplified performance, lit by sunlight demolishing any artificial boundary between him and us – and he recreates the atmosphere of being the funny mate having a laugh.

That’s important, because Mace confesses to suffering clinical depression. He tackled it in last year’s show but – surprise! – doing an Edinburgh run isn’t the panacea for deep-set mental health issues you might think. The joy has been sucked from comedy for him by having to be funny professionally, rather than just down the pub. This is his successful attempt to go back to that simpler approach.

Art seems something of a therapeutic release, too, and he shows us some of his surreal single-framers that would do The Far Side’s Gary Larsson proud.

But rather than dwell on his reality – after all, how many shows about depression can one man do? – Mace harnesses his instincts to just arse about for our entertainment. Job done.

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His Gladys Knight and the Pips routine is pure comic gold !

mb, March 2013

Genius! A true comedian. Hard to describe his style but it's unique for sure.

alan, January 2012

Though I spent most of the show questioning his sanity, at no point did I question his wit, the man is a comic genius who deserves so much more attention than he is getting

Matthew Sharp, August 2011

Seymour Mace is a brilliant man to see every time. No matter how bad your day has been, he will find a way to whisk you away to his magical place, fulfilling you with tears and laughter. Genuine good time comedy! Every time.

Swamp Thing, March 2011

The star of Just The Tonic Nottingham tonight. Genius. He can pimp my bee anyday.

stuart squires, November 2010

Brilliantly clever and absolutely hilarious. Love his material and think of him everytime I hear Midnight Train to Georgia! No mercy, continual laughter from start to finish.

Judi, November 2010

Ace. Just seen Fundayland at the ed fest, audience of 10, but he rocked it.

Hannah, August 2009

Headlined my gig on Saturday, encored and was absolutely outstanding - one of my favourites.

JS, February 2009

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