Review by Jay Richardson

Get ready to hear plenty more from Sean Nolan. Whether that's as a performer, writer or cartoonist is open to debate. But the Irishman has creativity to burn.

What he doesn't have yet is a confident stage presence. And it's a while before you can relax in his company.

He clutches a notepad that he doesn't read from so much as sustain the running order of his countless well-crafted one-liners. Every now and then, he'll suggest that you'll like or dislike this one, but seems to surprise even himself with one arch joke, messing up the intonation and peering quizzically at the page.

But like all the top gagsmiths, if the odd one doesn't land squarely, it doesn't greatly matter because another pearl arrives immediately. In his subversion of received wisdom, platitude and cliché, even reinventing the 'Doctor, Doctor...' format for the digital age, I was put in mind of Mitch Hedberg and began longing for the American's rhythmic delivery to better sell the material.

Hopefully, Nolan will learn greater trust in himself and lose the troubled, apologetic shake of the head before an especially challenging line. A young man in a hoodie, he doesn't have the unthreatening warmth of a Milton Jones or Tim Vine. And he invariably puts the joke before any concerns about indulging misanthropy, misogyny or existential bleakness. Several of his opening lines focus on death and there's a significant number that turn on abuse of the homeless.

Still, you wouldn't ascribe maliciousness to him, such is his vulnerability on stage and the more broadly philosophical levels of enquiry he reaches for. Rather, he's on a similar spectrum to Jimmy Carr and Frankie Boyle, inspired in the abstract by extreme human behaviour, a little cold and clinical about its correspondence to reality.

Perhaps that's not giving him enough credit though, because he has a brutal but satirically sound idea of the priorities of an Oxfam commercial director. And a bit on sweatshop labour will leave you gasping at the unerring, precise identification of the horror in a pair of flash trainers.

Wit and glorious wordplay splurge from his diffidence in stop-start bursts, like a recently acquired superpower he hasn't fully learned to master. The dictionary is a good book to read if you like non-sequiturs he suggests, and boy, does he like non-sequiturs.

Part of the initial discomfort arises from wondering if an hour of this will become oppressive. But he loosens up a little and his actual 50 minutes gets easier to listen to as time passes.

Betraying his greenness, he finishes with a superb series of cartoons. Sprinkled through his set, they might have mixed things up more enjoyably. As it is though, his rudimentary drawings and exalted punchlines could appear in the New Yorker with some tidying up. They remain the abiding memory of a raw, unpolished performance that might just herald greatness.

Review date: 19 Aug 2014
Reviewed by: Jay Richardson
Reviewed at: Just The Tonic at The Caves