Review: Simon Munnery: Fylm-Makker Stand Comedy Club (venue 5)

Unique is a grossly overused and even more grossly misused word – which I am about to use.

Star rating: * * * * *

Fylm-Makker is a unique show, a product of a strange but wonderful combination of the seemingly infinite kinds of funny contained in the mind of Simon Munnery. In one audacious, ingenious leap of imagination, Munnery has escaped the bounds of stand up as we know it, redrawing its very mechanics.

This is Munnery as we have never seen him, close-up and personal. Well, close-up, at least. Here there are ghosts and other special effects, live art and gripping drama.

The explanatory introduction (Ich Bin Ein Fylm-Makker) moves seamlessly into the first sketch. Or it would have if we had not been laughing and applauding so hard.

The show is, of course, studded with brilliant one-liners like spots on the face of a 15-year-old, and offers a powerful defence of the Post Office, an insightful deconstruction of the problems inherent in the comedy of 
Frank Carson, the world’s most useful Venn diagram and the actual sound of one hand clapping.

Munnery also takes on the vexed question of why literature lacks depictions of believable gay men in space. As well as all this, Fylm-Makker does contain a fylm, with a live soundtrack from Mick Moriarty. It is gripping stuff. Wheelie gripping. I shall say no more for fear of spoiling your enjoyment. You might imagine Munnery couldn’t possibly find time for pirates, Mexicans, a diatribe against the degradation of language and a typically adversarial conversation between two trees – one evergreen and one deciduous.

But he does. Bringing us right up to date with a song and a Jessie J reference, Munnery leaves us applauding his genius and pondering the price of peace.

Genius is a grossly overused and even more grossly misused word – which I am about to use. I think Simon Munnery might just be a comic genius.

Until 27 August. Today, 3:45pm.