Review by Steve Bennett

David Smiedt has learned a lot about comedy in the four years since starting stand-up, with a fluid, confident delivery and welcoming audience banter reassuring punters that they are in safe hands.

Unfortunately, he’s also picked up a lot of bad habits – with too many familiar jokes, public-domain anecdotes and ‘show and tell’ moments in which he gets laughs from simply reading what he has found.

Routines he didn’t write, but nonetheless performs in this debut show, include the well-known urban myth of a U2 concert, when Bono repeatedly clicked his fingers and says: ‘Every time I do this, a child dies of poverty’ only to get the smart-arse heckle: ‘Well, stop doing that then…’

It’s not the only punchline the comedy savvy can join in with. When he talks about the wisdom of Genesis, you know it’s going to be a Phil Collins joke; when an elderly relative teases an unmarried man at a wedding ‘it’ll be your turn next,’ you know the singleton return the line at a funeral; when he talks about people trying on his glasses, you know he’ll make the comparison with other medical aids such as wheelchairs…

Such hackneyed material – also including a couple of very old Jewish gags – casts a pall of suspicion over all his work: where is he getting it from? Well, sometimes it’s just from bringing something along to show us, whether it’s the food product called Slag or the device for preventing ‘camel-toe’ which is sold with the strapline ‘our lips are sealed’. Very funny, but what is Smiedt adding?

Thing is, he has got some good material, including, but not limited to, some nice lines about his relationship and a stand-out routine suggesting an alternative to the ‘getting to first base’ system of sexual conquest, but based on cricket instead.

He’s a stylish performer with enviable crowd skills, and these moments show what he might be capable of. But they’re the exceptions in a show that has more old hat than a millinery museum.

Review date: 9 Apr 2010
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett