Andrew Stanley: Some Things That Occured to Me in the Last While That I Thought You Should Know About
Note: This review is from 2008
Review by Steve Bennett
'The last while' here means the six seconds or so since he last asked a question of someone in the audience. If they are already wilting on the way in to this sauna of a venue, it's incumbent upon the performer to generate enough energy for everyone.Well, Andrew Stanley is more hyperactive than a Ritalin-deprived child. He can cram 100 words into the time it takes most people to say 'hello', smiling and exclaiming
'brilliant' and 'amazing' all the while, like not-so-subliminal advertising.
He starts off like a club compere, really getting into his audience, digging away at them to try and find a couple of contrasting ideas to play off each other. Paydirt! The newly-engaged pair and then the couple wed for 34 years.
His enthusiasm is noisy and boundless. He's excessively excited about the ordinary, in the hope that we'll be swept along too.
He even starts looking for ‘Any Americans in?' in order to lead into a story about visiting the States and a submarine called the USS Growler, which hilariously is an Irish slang term for vagina. As he tellingly says, he 'couldn't make up jokes as funny as this'.
So he doesn't try. He tells us long stories about kids’ games, going to the dentist, haircuts, eavesdropping on inane arguments. It's as though bestowing the gift of his attention on some commonplace activity, confers instant hilarity upon it, because he's dramatising the account.
But it doesn't really. There's a lot of noise and gesticulating and he sells stuff as though it's funny, which is a talent in itself, but a bit more content and a lot less shouting and bawling would be welcome.
Reviewed by: Julia Chamberlain
Review date: 1 Jan 2008
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
