Review by Steve Bennett

Like your comedy with meaning and message? Then best steer clear of Paul Currie, who serves an enjoyably daft series of unlinked absurd sketches for no other reason than he finds them funny.

His few elements of twisted stand-up channel Tony Law, to whom he bears some physical resemblance, and there are some of the more playful elements of Doctor Brown in his engagement with the audience; especially the opening business with a tiny plastic hand.

After that, Currie emerges on to the stage, in stylish three-piece suit, that’s just a couple of sizes too small. There’s an elegance, too, to the stage design, an old-fashioned valve wireless and wind-up gramophone give the appearance of a post-Edwardian drawing room. They had to make their own entertainment then, but nothing like this.

Currie’s hour is a barrage of non-sequitur set pieces incorporating, mime, props, puppetry, poetry, interaction and sporadic stand-up. It can be a bit noisy, both in actual volume and in the tone, with lots of random ideas scrambling for space.

Sometimes it works brilliantly. The mime to A-ha’s Take On Me is like a weird puppet version of the Bohemian Rhapsody scene from Wayne’s Word; the introductory speech to Hart to Hart hilarious for the control Currie must conjure to hold his pose. In fact, Currie’s commitment to the weirdness is faultless – like a proper maniac – and the show is never less than skillfully crafted and intensely performed.

But other scenes outstay their welcome – I’m looking at you, the guy from the Cash Republic (next to the Czech one, geddit?). Currie likes to test the audience a bit, in the hope that a laugh will come to puncture the awkwardness. Sometimes it does.

I was slightly spoiled by this show for having seen John Kearns’s excellent offering Sight Gags For Perverts first. For Kearns has put personal heart and context to his award-nominated odd pieces; while Currie’s hour is unapologetically just one weird scene after another – and the difference is marked.

The Sticky Bivouac does, indeed, go through its sticky patches, but there are also moments of brilliantly funny madness in the mix. But if you do go, ignore the ushers’ pleas to sit in the front row unless you’re really prepared to be consumed in the messy childishness.

Review date: 24 Aug 2013
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett