Original Review:

Show Rating:

On form, Glenn Wool is a blistering, intelligent, passionate comic. Unfortunately, he's a very long way from being on form.

In the past year this assured Canadian has acquired a new image; he's had his hair cut, joined a gym and even had his back waxed. But it seems that a lot of his old magic went the same way as that body hair.

The gig was always going to be hard work. The audience was unresponsive from the start, but repeatedly blaming them for not laughing was never going to win him any friends.

He spent an age before he got under way, just talking aimless nonsense to the audience for far too long, and throughout the show he demonstrated a compulsion go off on meandering, tangential rants in a desperate and futile approach to find the collective funny bone.

The prepared material, too, was patchy. There were some well-made points, about the irony of English people's new-found snootiness over American imperialism and arrogance, and a couple of enjoyable slices of surreal nonsense

But elsewhere he set his sights no higher than talking about internet pornography and his recurring character of 'ass-fucking Carl'.

As is compulsory, he covered the war on Iraq, but was as unsuccessful as Hans Blix in discovering anything new. There was a nice angle on the anti-war marches ("Any protest without solution is just whining"), but too often he laboured his points - and forgot to make them funny.

His finale, in which he pulled out a series of T-shirts was prop comedy of the dullest, laziest kind. I'm not sure what's inherently funny about a garment saying Jewish Youth Choir Festival, and he certainly didn't convey why we should find it so hilarious.

I saw Glenn Wool and all I got were these lousy T-shirt gags. Let's hope he gets back on the boil soon.