Show Rating:

Albino Hunter is one strange, complex, and utterly compelling hour.

Marx is hugely enthusiastic and communicates his genuine passion and excitement about his first full length Edinburgh show to the audience. On one hand he's a showman and magician, opening with a clever illusion involving a potato masquerading as a light bulb, immediately challenging the audience's assumptions. It's not the first time perceptions and prejudices will be taken for a spin in Carey's comedy centrifuge.

But he's also a bright, gifted stand-up, who first endears himself by recounting his painful experiences on the wrong end of childhood name calling; innocent enough anecdotes which are later cleverly interwoven into the narrative.

He continues with tales of eating breakfast off his girlfriend's body, Spanish ant processions and shagging a snowman who turned out to be an albino. Typically unrelated and puerile stand-up stories, you might thing, but Marx cleverly ties them all together, giving them greater depth and meaning.

His comedy is brilliantly thought-out and the show carefully constructed, allowing him to espouse ideas on the world and nature that touch on the profound. Marx is a comic who respects his audience's intelligence.

The show's bizarre title is explained in routine about religion and an out-of-body experience, in which God tells him that he must become an albino hunter in order to gain a more prestigious position in heaven.

Using theories about the brain and its functions,a nd Freud's theories on humour, he deconstructs jokes as to whether they are cruel and hurtful or harmless and fun. Are his own anti-albino jokes feeding prejudices, or defusing them?

Marx clearly has good material and weaves many gems into his theories, forcing the audience to laugh as they think about the universe and the miracle of creation."We are all sperm that have raced against a million other sperm, we won, we're all winners," is the uplifting message.

But with a genuinely intelligence and complex comedian such as Marx, things aren't ever than straightforward...