Review by Steve Bennett

‘I don’t want to deal in clichés,’ says Paco Erhard as he invokes the image of his countrymen nabbing sun-loungers with their beach towels. He certainly wants to have his Gugelhupf and eat it.

National stereotypes are the foundation of this show, and while he’d like to challenge some of the more crass tabloid ideas about the Fatherland, he’s not averse to throwing in a few geographical jibes himself, getting kneejerk laughs at sex-obsessed Italians, idiot Americans and Nazi-gold-hoarding Swiss.

Elsewhere, there’s some more obvious stuff about predictive texts, signs in toilets and even, heaven help us, how you wait ages for a bus and then four come along that will make you wonder whatever happened to his cliché ban. But amid the easy jokes in his sometimes ill-focussed barrage of arguments, sits some stronger writing and insightful observation into what genuinely influences national psyche, both of British and German. Such concepts as the ingrained guilt of his nation are interestingly addressed, but need to be drawn out along a more coherent, confident train of thought, but nevertheless there is evidence of sharpness here.

Another symptom of his lack of trust in himself is the ubiquitous PowerPoint. There are maybe one or two slides that genuinely illustrate a joke; the rest of the presentation is a prop which often keeps his focus on the screen rather than the audience. It’s unnecessary, as his delivery otherwise gives the impression of a man in control, with a commanding presence and an easy way of dealing both with the audience and the technical snafus which – ironically – wouldn’t be an issue if he didn’t have the projector.

He stresses that back home order is king, but has here mistaken that for an adherence to an unnecessary episodic structure about those nominal steps. But there’s some bright writing on display and an assured delivery, so maybe he’ll one day rank alongside all those other in-demand German exports.

Review date: 19 May 2011
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett