**** Bizarre, slightly head-scratching oddball comedy
Julian Fox is a slight, unassuming man who makes his banal life into something at once absurdly comical and strangely lovable.
Last year I saw Fox perform his Re-Branding Mr God to an audience of nine. Something happened that I've never seen before: we all stayed together after the show, trying to figure it out. We agreed there was a low-key hilarity to it all, but just couldn't decide how serious he was about his attempts, at once clunking and oddly delicate, into art.
This year's show shares more biographical detail with us: Fox is a stage door-keeper at the Barbican Centre, and has been looking for a new flatmate because, he tells us in puzzlement, he doesn't seem to be able to keep them very long. He reads from his journals, plays taped reviews of designer coffee-shop chains and sings a clutch of off-the-wall, surprisingly haunting songs. I now know that he seems pretty much the same offstage as on: you feel he's a little bit of a wacko, but he also has a porcelain quality that you want to cherish.
His show is a rather specialised taste: go expecting closing-time stand-up guffaws, and you will probably be both bewildered and disappointed. Go expecting curious, evanescent delights and you will be... well, curiously delighted.
Written for divento.com
Copyright © Ian Shuttleworth; all rights reserved.
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