Comedy review: Johnny White Really-Really: Pigeons

Edinburgh Festival Fringe: Embracing anti-comedy, a character in one of his dreamlike fugues asking 'are you joking? Is it going to turn into a joke?', Johnny White likes to play with tension and anti-climax, opening with a long routine about the actor James Nesbitt irking him in various scenarios.

Just the Tonic at The Mash House (Venue 288)

***

When the punchline finally lands, it’s scarcely related to what came before and arguable as to whether it was worth the build-up. But White barely seems to care if the audience is present, let alone on board, offering up his odd little musings with an amused smile.

Reflecting on relative obscura, such as Sabrina the Teenage Witch and The Animals of Farthing Wood, a phrase he repeats with a Stewart Lee-like regularity, it really shouldn’t engage. But the subject matter is secondary to the quirks of thought White deploys and to an extent it does, the logic that imagines every firework display a commemoration of your own mistakes appealingly egotistical and self-critical simultaneously. There’s some nice turns of phrase, as when White describes himself as “something of a face” at his local doctors. And it’s not altogether a surprise to hear him allude to a nervous breakdown, his relationship with the world tuned differently to most.