Review by Steve Bennett

Fellow comic Dave Hughes, who Thornton briefly impersonates, has made quite a decent career in Melbourne from his maddening strangulated vowels – do we really need another comic who’s so similarly affected?

Thornton contorts his voice with every punchline, pushing it though his constricted laughter, as if his material is so funny he can’t help but crack himself up. As if this wasn’t enough, every supposedly funny line is followed by a deliberate, elongated ‘Errrrm’ as a none-to-subtle prompt for laughter. Combine these vocal tics with a perpetual pacing of the stage, as agitatedly and purposefully as a hyperactive bee describing where the pollen is, and you are left with a very frustrating performer indeed.

Some of this is down to pure nervous energy, which Thornton has in spades, but there’s a fine line between being lively and just plain irritating that this jittery 28-year-old skips over way too often.

The very broad theme of the show is information and communication – which pretty much covers anything he could want to. Indeed, there is no great focus to the monologue.

His material is patchy, too. There are a few nice gags, but too often we’re in very familiar territory. Americans are excitable, Sean Connery’s accent in the Hunt For Red October isn’t very Russian, what’s the deal with all that penis-enlargement spam? Here are some Chuck Norris ‘facts’ I got off the internet. A bloke in the gym asks Thornton if he can spot him. ‘There you are!’ he obviously replies…

Occasionally he finds new ground in old topics, such as silent letters, but it’s the exception rather than the rule. The easier the target, the more likely Thornton is to aim at it.

He got the laughs sure enough – though with material as simple as this, you might be surprised if he didn’t – but there are precious few examples of him trying anything interesting.

Reviewed by: Steve Bennett

Review date: 1 Jan 2013
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett