I first encountered John Luke Roberts at ACMS (The
Alternative Comedy Memorial Society) as co-host alongside Thom Tuck. I thought
I’d see what he had to offer in his own right.
Having John-Luke Roberts as co-host to ACMS is fitting – his
solo work is an electric, overwhelming display of absurdist clowning and
characters.
This show starts off with Geoffrey Chaucer, barely dressed
in a toga, speaking in faux-medieval seemingly with the catchphrase ‘sarry
aboot me cack’ – there’s certainly very little left to the imagination.
What proceeds is an enigmatic romp through various
characters, including The Portent of Death (a vampiric character who foretells
people’s deaths, which typically end up being quite comic and altogether very
unlikely), to Derek Jacobi, but dressed as what looks like an angler fish as he
slowly destroys the world (a broccoli stem is in actual fact a tree).
This was a thrilling, surreal hour of quite brilliant
absurdist character comedy that was all at once refreshing, hilarious and made
for one of the more memorable shows from Edinburgh 2017.
His subsequent Comedians Comedian Podcast episode is equally
fascinating and well worth checking out. I can’t wait to see what 2018 has to
offer.
Score: 9/10
Venue: Monkey Barrel Comedy Club
No comments:
Post a Comment