Brighton Fringe review by Steve Bennett

Jumping on the geeky comedy bandwagon, ‘Professor’ James Bennison – a former teacher and half the Slap & Giggle sketch duo – loosely themes his show around everyone’s favourite irrational number.

But anyone, including the computer programmers, physicists and maths graduates in tonight audience, expecting much of mathematical interest should recalibrate their expectations. Save for reciting π to several decimal places, and an interesting background to Pythagoras’ Theorum nicked from QI, anything too geeky is avoided. Problems with his girlfriend, who he portrays as both unreasonable and a bit dim, represent a bigger slice of the pi-chart.

In fact, this is not a show of substance at all – yet it passes the time in a cheery spirit of frivolous fun. Adopting a bowtied took from Matt Smith’s Doctor Who, Bennison gives poor puns the hard sell, bursts into cheesy song and playfully engages the audience in unwinnable games and borderline uncomfortable conversation.

His enthusiasm sees him through, and although he has a couple of decent gags, they are welcome, unexpected bonuses, rather than the bread and butter of the hour. It’s all empty frippery, but somehow the show is greater than the sum of its inconsequential parts. Or to put it another way:

Review date: 19 May 2014
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett