Review by Paul Fleckney

'Part dance party, part chutney class' is how Calypso Nights is billed, and the real thing is every bit as strange as that suggests.

Juan Vesuvius is a Venezuelan DJ who wants to teach us all about calypso and soca music, and I strongly urge you take him up on this offer. He was in Edinburgh last year and picked up a Skinny Fringe Genius award for his first show – I missed out on that one, and if you did too, this is your chance to make up for that maraca-shaking omission.

As is the way with absurd humour, it slightly spoils it to describe exactly what Juan does, so I’ll tread lightly. For the first half hour, he says very little, the humour coming from the musical, visual and physical. As a performer he’s got a lot on his plate – audience work, props, vinyl records to quickly swap over (only a few times does this interrupt the flow); but he’s on top of everything, and has a real gift for creating humour from unexpected places.

His entrance reminds me of Dr Brown’s ridiculous ways of beginning his show, on skis and attempting to recreate dry ice with the smoke of his fag – this was the first sign for me that this was going to be a good one. Once we’re into it, there’s a part where he explains the history of the Caribbean using flags handed out to the crowd. There’s some larking around with mash-ups of different musical styles that has a touch of the Bill Bailey about it. As an ambassador for that part of the world, he is angered by behemothic United Fruit Company, and presents a recap on how they came to exploit one of the Caribbean’s most prized assets: the banana.

Speaking of bananas, his use of one in this show during a section about chutney has to be the best use of fruit this Fringe. I’d love to be proved wrong, but it’s highly unlikely. It’s one of a handful of genuinely hilarious scenes Juan conjures up.

Juan, the creation of New Zealander Barnie Duncan, performs the whole thing in pidgin English with slicked-back hair, flip-flops, and the sort of outrageous sleeves that not even Elvis would have countenanced.

The show tails off in the final 15 minutes, as he takes into even more bizarre territory that’s light on comic content. But nonetheless, Calypso Nights is an Edinburgh Fringe gem – strange, silly, and very, very funny.

Review date: 10 Aug 2015
Reviewed by: Paul Fleckney
Reviewed at: Assembly Roxy