Review by Steve Bennett

How to describe Terry Clement? He has a couple of bashes himself, likening his act to a trip on psychedelic mushrooms, or ‘an observational comedian for schizophrenics’. Both have elements of truth, for whatever this Canadian’s act is, it’s certainly different.

The hour is a hodge-podge of songs, poems and cheap prop comedy – often infused with a morbid fetishising of men being brutally shot in the head. But then they’ll be a genuine jaunty kids’ tale, or a silly bit of surreal nonsense to lighten the mood.

Such a fragmented tone makes it hard to put a handle on just who Clement is, though ‘odd’ would certainly cover it. You know that from the moment this strange bald man with bushy beard opens the show with a jaunty, boggle-eyed knees-up to When The Saints Go Marching In, which subsequently takes a demonic turn.

The following pieces vary from the sublime to the dumb – and sometimes both at once. It’s occasionally hilarious, frequently baffling, sometimes just kinda interesting – as an audience member you simply have to go with the flow and try not to over-analyse it, just like that ’shroom trip.

Weird episodes involve him chatting to a banana, dancing with a ‘jellyfish’, earnestly discussing bestiality, or elevating a trite observation about the homoerotic undertones of pro wrestling to strange brilliance, by acting it out graphically with action figures. He employs multi-media creatively, conversing with backing tracks and utilising video with well-judged restraint to illustrate his songs, both self-penned and the occasional warped cover.

Yet for all the well-planned oddness, one of the funniest moment shows him at his most human, struggling to get into his shirt, in a piece of slapstick that may or may not have been intentional.

Generally, he seems to be playing a prank on the idea of comedy; that the world isn’t so clean and regimented that you can package up hilarity and sell it as a product, but that it should emerge naturally from just mucking about. He’s just doing daft shit that entertains him, in the hope that it will entertain us, too.

Some of it does, and uniquely so. Some of it doesn’t, but that doesn’t seem to matter too much to him, or to us.

Review date: 4 Aug 2013
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett