The Boy trailer

With Richard Crawley

Richard Crawley: The Boy at the 2011 Brighton Fringe
Live Review
Brighton Upstairs At Three and Ten

It’s not entirely clear why Richard Crawley has decided to list his dramatic monologue under ‘comedy’. There’s a certain wit to the story he tells, sure, and you’ll probably leave smiling, but this is very much an acting showcase, not especially aiming for gags and rather too earnest in its intent to classify as a rib-tickler. Hell, he can even say with a completely straight face such cheesy lines such as: ‘You’ve got a bucket of pennies in your hand and a dream in your heart.’

This is the story – sorry, ‘journey’– of a boy of immense beauty, unloved as a child growing up on a Winnipeg trailer park, who goes on to New York to seek his fortune. There he enjoys the hedonistic life, quickly going from nothing to a model on Times Square billboards and leading a boy band – while hooking up romantically with Eighties disco diva Sinitta… at least until the time comes to grow up.

The Sinitta link appears to be the tenuous joke on which this endeavour is built, as Crawley reinterprets her shallow songs as personal messages about their relationship. Another possible strand of humour deriving from his arrogance at considering himself so beautiful is never lucratively mined, as this is so clearly a theatrical piece, rather than employing the dynamics of stand-up.

Crawley takes a few pokes at the fourth wall by asking leading questions of the audience, but they do not distract him from what is so obviously a shop window for his thespian talents, as he orates emotionally over swelling music or turns on the pathos. He has certainly got the ability to keep us absorbed in this slightest of stories. But although likeable, for the most part this hour’s not funny, nor particularly intended to be, which makes it hard to review as a comedy.