Live From New York, It's Jonathan Prager - Fringe 2009
Live Review

Wandering in a few minutes late when his audience are already in residence ,still dressed in the clothes in which he’s just been playing football creates an informal air, but also one that suggests that Prager hasn’t much invested in this particular show.

The material that follows explains his tardiness: he is a serial offender who has even had group therapy to help cure him. It’s a routine that contains well-written to-ing and fro-ing of wordplay and punchlines that he executes to enjoyable effect in other sections of the show.

At the start of the show he refers to himself ‘the serious comedian,’ here because he ‘doesn’t like to laugh and hopes we don’t either,’ but the twinkle in his eyes betrays his teasing; there’s a kindness and mischief behind the New Yorker’s humour as well as large amount of self-deprecation and neurosis.

He confesses not just to lateness but to attention deficit disorder (indeed later on when he opens the door to let in a little air he’s distracted by passing people outside) and a tendency towards absentmindedness. All sufficient symptoms to work up a routine about therapy and a discussion of his relationship with his mother.

It’s a show that feels like it has potential, but there’s something distinctly lacklustre about it. Perhaps it’s simply how rushed Prager was to get there on time, but the result is that the show loses any edge it may have otherwise contained.