Show Rating:

If you've not already encountered him, it’s difficult to concisely declare what Doktor Cocacolamcdonalds might be. Sweeping onto the stage in full glam rock makeup, clad only in a child’s swimsuit, a hideous tie and some glitter, the Doktor cuts a shambolic shape.

He makes swift recourse to his props, which are an infuriating Casio keyboard he seems unable to play and a shabbily gaffer-taped guitar shaped electronic device which probably dates from Christmas 1985. He seems to be incapable of obtaining a pleasant sound from either, but surely this is some kind of light-under-a-bushel shtick? The clever material is coming with the next bizarre costume change.

But if the costume change brings some relief to the audience, partly because it gives twenty-five percent of them an opportunity to leave this madhouse, and partly because he his now wearing a cardboard box on his head, it does not herald the funny bit. Instead we are to indulge in a little performance poetry, which fails to work either as pisstake or soliloquy.

He fills the time with some moderately entertaining spiritual ‘cold reading’ of the audience, working his way round in search of someone with a cat, or just a name, so that he can demonstrate his powers of foresight, of course in song. There are many songs of protest and lament to be sung before we must all own up to picking our noses, and other nasty habits. Is it just his persistence that eventually elicits despairing chuckles from this audience?

Gradually things are beginning to clarify; that microphone should be a hairbrush, the venue not a Portakabin at the Pleasance, but a sock-sodden teenage bedroom, and the audience should not be here at all.

Doktor Cocacolamcdonalds might be has done telly of course, and it is conceivable that he is bizarre and whacky enough to sustain embarrassed titters for ten minutes. This, his third Edinburgh hour, is nevertheless ill advised.

He confuses audience and critics alike, which is presumably what he sets out to do.

Reviewed by: Chloe Smith