*** First time without the mask of a character... sort of
He's not appearing as Alan Parker Urban Warrior or the League Against Tedium, but he spends much of the show with a bucket on his head.
Munnery is best known as an exponent of, for want of a less blindingly pretentious phrase, Nietzschean surrealist comedy. The first segment of the show is in effect a lower-tech version of his League persona: instead of video and audio fripperies, he has a flip chart and that bucket, as he expounds insights like, "Judge not lest ye be judged... but He didn't mean distances, did He?" and "Do not punish yourself; you will deprive the world of its purpose."
After an interlude with Andrew Bailey and his bewildering box of tricks (including crows on radio aerials and an impersonation of a human bingo machine), Munnery returns to try straighter stand-up material. His skewed comedic vision still shines through, as he asks, "So, anyone here from anywhere? Anyone ever noticed anything?" But he's strangely diffident without a big character to wear. Some of his anecdotes are just strange childhood rambles. But the houseful of fans know that this is a departure, and are on side throughout. And he explains in Darwinian detail why the egg came before the chicken...
Written for divento.com
Copyright © Ian Shuttleworth; all rights reserved.
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