Review: Paul Foot – Kenny Larch Is Dead, Underbelly Cowgate (Venue 61)

By Jay Richardson
Published on 27/08/2012 15:18

“You couldn’t make it up!” Paul Foot declares during this surrealist outpouring of nonsense. And to be fair, there are very few comics who can match him for this sort of weird, free-flowing frivolity, and few who would even dare attempt it.

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Lesbian salmon with a deeper love than the couple consuming them; a children’s birthday party irreparably damned by the serving of vegetarian sausages; actress Sue Johnston wrecking her back on a trampoline; a cheddar cheese collection laid waste by a diverted train.

He hurtles through these offbeat imaginings with a possessed animation, sporadically overtaken by self-imposed fury or frustration, each tale building towards some distant, insane climax.

Mesmerising and rhythmically delivered, the laughs burst from his colourful palette of language and the instances in which he takes pause, reflecting on the ridiculousness of his latest sally on reality. Strung together with the phrase “meanwhile…” however, the lack of coherence eventually starts to feel routine and even a bit lazy. He breaks off briefly for a diverting set-piece on apposite anagrams for supermarkets. But his completely gibberish finale feels less like a triumphant final step than a convenient way to get out of the show.

Until tomorrow. Today 7:30pm.