Review by Steve Bennett

At the risk of damning with faint praise, Adam Rozenbachs is a perfectly decent comedian. He’s got the delivery of someone knows what he’s doing and an arsenal of topical gags, entertaining travel stories and self-deprecating memories of his awkward teenage years.

Yet he also suffers from being something of an identikit comic – not because he goes over well-trodden ground; he doesn’t particularly – but because he’s missing that quirk of personality to set him aside from the crowd of thirtysomething middle-class comics talking in broad, observational terms. Having had a mullet as a teenager isn’t quite enough.

He’s amiable in his manner, and just laddish enough to think it’s odd that he eats Special K for breakfast, but not have footy, fighting and shagging high on his comic agenda.

Sometimes he comes up with a witty, imaginative routine, such as his solution to the rise of glassing in city pubs, but observational material on such topics as elicitly peeing in the sea can lack distinction. Tales from his trip to Laos, where he went caving and careering down a pub-lined river in an inner tube, are likewise enjoyable without being substantial – a perfect bar conversation, not quite justifying its place as a stand-up routine.

He’s decent company for an hour, but it’d be hard to envisage a scrum for tickets to see him.

Review date: 17 Apr 2010
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett