Dan March: Goldrunner - Fringe 2009
Live Review

How awful to have peaked at 17. Dan March is an amiable comic actor with several Fringe shows under his belt; this one is the therapy show.

He reviews his life from the point of 1991 TV appearance on Blockbusters, a quiz show with six million viewers. As he pointed out, he would have to perform in the Wee Room to a capacity audience for 300 years to reach the same numbers.

He shows us clips of his appearance on the show, fresh-faced and bouffant-haired, alternately exultant in his acronym-based knowledge or baffled and anxious, crushed by his failure to answer. He was pretty and sparky enough to pass the audition to get on the programme, but the heavy coating of naïve geek that came with it made him absolutely useless with women, and that is the heart of the show.

Teenage naivety gave way to a lifetime of blustery ineptitude and there are some uncomfortable tells in the show that indicate just how close to the truth this is. There’s the dependence and comfort in facts – including several quiz moments with instant chocolate rewards for the audience. Alongside this is the smug injunction to ‘look it up’ when he feels he’s made a particularly smart observation himself.

There’s queasy love of puns, double entendres and repetitive verbal tics ‘not a euphemism’ and a tendency to share too much, in a blurted, slightly shamefaced manner. It’s ironic that you’d listen to some graphic and dirty tale from someone with Jim Jeffries’ brutal strut, but the miserable social embarrassments recounted here are far more discomfiting. Normally when a comic cites himself as being a loser, he means he’s anything but – at worst he’s the underdog who wins through – but here you’re inclined to suck your teeth and agree with him.

It’s been well constructed, pains have been taken, but it’s not funny enough for comedy and not passionate enough for drama.