After an incredibly strong showing with last year’s Hubba Hubba, Tom Lawrinson returns with an hour that hits in many ways but feels as if it should have more momentum than it does. His brilliant online sketches with Sam O’Leary are pulling in the crowds to the live shows, but something about Buried Alive And Loving It that comes across a little muted. 

It might be down to a shift in subject matter. In Hubba Hubba, Lawrinson told strange stories in which he painted himself as a midnight creeper, scuttling around on rooftops and climbing down chimneys to scare or possibly romance your nan. 

Buried Alive, however, takes a turn towards the personal, relating Lawrison’s childhood as the brother of three sisters, a beautifully observed self-portrait of a ‘topless boy’ running semi-feral around his house, brilliantly pinpointing that uncomfortable childish physicality that he imposed on his Dad’s friends. It’s a very Lawrinson topic, as is his killer routine about the prevalence of Simpsons porn with all its off-model disproportionate limbs – ‘They’ve got amateurs drawing it!’ he moans.

The early routines eventually coalesce into a single strange true story about his family upping sticks to start a new life in Spain. After initially attempting to fit a family of six into a one-bedroom ground-floor flat, his Dad eventually dug a second bedroom under the building by hand, where Tom and his sisters lived like mole people. 

It’s dynamite material, but despite the profusion of great lines,  Lawrinson hasn’t quite managed to tell the autobiographical stuff in a way that fits with his existing stage persona. He spends the hour shifting between sex ghoul and normal guy without finding the midway point. 

Also – and this is going to seem like a minor point but it’s one that must be made – he’s been given some of the most inappropriate lighting I’ve seen all Fringe. An act like Lawrinson needs something warm and Halloweeny – goopy greens, oranges and purples. The Underbelly has him outfitted with harsh, almost fluorescent whites that make him look like he’s doing standup in a fishmonger’s. That bunker can’t be an easy room to work at the best of times, but the lighting is really not helping.

So it feels like the show has yet to find its ideal form, but Lawrinson is  naturally funny and the writing is so good, so it’s still well worth a trip to see this tale of ‘typical Brits, going over there, tunnelling under the earth…’