ichard Herring – Lord of the Dance Settee
4 Stars
There’s something quite joyful about watching a middle-aged man
bouncing up and down on a battered green settee in front of a couple of
hundred people on a Monday evening. He’s clearly at an age where he
should know better, there’s every chance that he could seriously hurt
himself, and yet there he is, jumping away. Jumping, jumping and
jumping, because 40 years previously this man misheard some hymn lyrics
and thought that this is what Jesus did – “I am the Lord of the Dance Settee”.
Unfortunately, Jesus only stretched to feeding the poor or healing the
sick, leaving him with little time left to pogo up and down on a couch.
This is probably why Jesus died in his mid 30s whilst Herring has made
it to the grand old age of 47.
It’s a silly start to Herring’s 23rd year on the Edinburgh
Fringe, but it serves as a sign of what’s to come. Herring admits that
there’s no grand theme to his show this year, just a load of daft stuff
strung together – musings on kissing old people, reminiscences of the
very best gag he ever wrote, his one-man Twitter war against Misogyny as
well as the jaunty impact of wearing a sombrero. It’s performed at
Herring’s usual frenetic pace and if any of the punch lines fall flat he
is secure enough to throw this back upon his audience, finding a way to
make the material work even if it’s through an analysis of why it
hasn’t.
The abandonment of a major theme (although there might have been
something in there about movement vs. inertia, I’m not sure) allows
Herring a chance to play about a bit more, stretching gags to breaking
point and making giant leaps between topics. Yet even with a mishmash of
material, he still finds a cleverly ridiculous way of pulling the whole
hour together at the end. It’s perhaps not as accomplished as previous
years’ work that I’ve reviewed, but it’s still a lot of fun. I’d
definitely catch Herring whilst you can, before he does himself an
injury.
Reviewed by Diane
