Review by Steve Bennett

Matthew Crosby’s solo Fringe debut is a modestly charming affair, which might be a disappointment to those expecting the big, brash comedy that he indulged in as a member of sketch group Pappy’s.

This is a quietly inward-looking show of limited ambition, rather too heavy on the PowerPoint, as he takes us through the bad haircuts of his past, his nerdy tendencies and his love of a Nando’s meal.

Nothing in this is inherently important, or even intrinsically interesting, but Crosby has a engaging line in self-deprecation, which he makes go a long way. He even mocked his use of the screen, as he said of a PowerPoint slide of one of his Twitter posts: ‘This is a joke that’s not strong enough to be said out loud…’ How true.

His engagement with the audience is always affable, and tonight he had a rather a strange encounter with a young man called Philippe that he quick-wittedly mined to great effect. One of Crosby’s aims is to make the distinction between a geek and a nerd, and the amiable audience participation helps draw that line.

Of course, many comedians are nerds and/or geeks on some level, and this is territory that has been fairly comprehensively covered before. Things do move up a gear when that obsessive personality manifests itself at the home of peri-peri chicken, with detailed material about the minutiae of dining there, and its loyalty card system in particular.

The show was garnished with a B-feature opening film, and has a reasonably structure to it, giving a little weight to what could be flimsy material. But although it’s a reasonably entertaining hour, there’s very little adventure in Adventureparty. I’d like to see Crosby stretch himself more than this.

Review date: 17 Aug 2011
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett