Matt Green: Too Much Information
Note: This review is from 2011
Matt Green's shtick always used to be that he looked younger than he was, but he's probably become bored with it, as he doesn't mention it during this show. It is slightly incongruous watching a man in a suit who still looks like a boy talk about shagging his girlfriend of 12 years (that's the length of their relationship...) in a hotel room in Singapore. Grown-up he may now be, but as he confesses, he's still easily distracted.
Green does provem, indeed, prove exactly how easily his attention is diverged by frequently getting distracted throughout his show, which, as you can probably glean from the title, is about information overload.
Firstly there's the people on the front row who turn out to be perfect fodder for the experienced club comedian. There's Benji, who’s making a return visit, so Green is already aware that although he looks like your average, slight, white, young man he in fact has a voice deeper than Barry White or James Earl Jones combined. Then moving on to the rather verbose and well enunciated fellow further along, he discovers that his girlfriend freely admits to having stalked him on the internet before they began dating.
It's a fine start to a gig, the banter is fruitful and funny; though perhaps Green should have reigned it in a little, given that he has a show to get through.
The prepared material is a hotch potch of observations loosely based around distraction. Is the Olympics really a 'distraction?' If you're trying to work in the house when it's on the telly in the background, then maybe. The 2012 Olympics has been fuelling many comics' set for a while now and Green has some nice material about sponsors Cadbury, although the material about the mascots 'Wenlock and Mandeville' is weaker possibly because you spend so much time agog at how astonishingly crap they are as a concept.
Green weaves in and out of random, apparently unrelated routines: A gig in Prince Charles's gaff Clarence House, the Kindle shuffle and a lovely Radio 4 analogy. There is plenty of solid stand-up material here, though the constant distractions make the enjoyable set somewhat muddled.
Review date: 21 Aug 2011
Reviewed by: Marissa Burgess