Show Rating:

Helmut (aka character actor Marc Blake) is clearly a man with big plans: to become Germany's finest comedian. But you have to wonder whether his aspirations have led him too far out of his depth.

There is no doubt Helmut is a well-constructed character, born out of an attempt to give complexity to commonplace generalisations. He is promoting the stereotypical German tourist, complete with a wonderful opening presentation of his holiday snapshots, but Blake also gives gravity to his character by liberally sprinkling aspects of more unexpected subjectivity.

Helmut does discuss his ambition to be Germany's finest comedian and his bizarre relationship with Mutti directly with the audience in some of his gags, but not with the same intensity with which he contemplates it to himself (shown by a number of well-staged reflective moments). It is easily possible to trace a line between how Helmut thinks to himself and how he acts on stage, one of the finer points of Blake's creation.

Essentially, Helmut is the German master of the two-liner. The large majority of his gags all follow the same formula. The subject matter is familiar observational topics, yet dealt with from the more original perspective of a bemused tourist. Helmut is extremely naïve, even to the extent that Blake often equates his character with a child.

Some of these jokes are extremely well written ("You like Toblerone? Why don't you try eating a nailbomb covered in chocolate next time?"), but, essentially, Helmut appears to be a one-trick pony. By the time the show has reached its final third, and he is still cracking gags about how slow the service is in Garfunkels, then he is beginning to lose his audience.

Blake does attempt to fill the show out by introducing two other characters, Bruno Gummi (Helmut's old school friend turned EU official) and Jean-Claude Rambuncteau (French porn star), but this is ill advised, as they make nowhere near the same amount of impact as Helmut.

With just a large repertoire of jokes, each with multiple punchlines, Helmut's hit- rate is just not as high as it should be. Although Blake clearly has nailed down a solid concept for an hour-long show, there are still obvious moments of filler material and this, coupled with the amount of duff jokes, holds back his acutely constructed character from what it can achieve.