Comedy review: The Andy Field Experience

Edinburgh Festival Fringe: Andy Field is in one of those funks that can afflict the self-indulgent Fringe performer who reckons they're not getting the audience they deserve.

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33)

***

Tempering enthusiasm from the start, he has, he explains, cultivated a style where he at least amuses himself. More specifically, he can be said to specialise in reverse engineered wordplay, with a screen projecting clunky, sticklebrick-like puns which he then deconstructs to laughs or otherwise. In between, he shares short stories that reinforce the perception of him as a disaffected, shambling stoner, making few concessions to being likeable and essentially goading the crowd into disengaging.

Abandoning jokes halfway through if he reckons they’re not going well, he was over-sensitive from the start this evening, the fault lying squarely with him. The only saving grace to this petulant, immature display is that it feeds his misanthropic projection of what The Andy Field Experience is. And that a lot of his material, in isolation, is really quite good, with an inventiveness and wilfully renegade juvenilia that sets it apart from the clockwork machinations of the typical punster comic. If he could meet the audience halfway he’d have a decent, distinctive act.

Until 27 August. Today 9:45pm.