Review by Steve Bennett

Not one for coulrophobes, Ally Houston’s nightmarish musical fantasy about a man and his pet clown Shandy is rather too sluggish and repetitive to garner the laughs, even though there are some agreeably surreal moments and indelible mental images.

The dark story tells of how Ally picked up the clown at a carnival as a child, but has spent a lifetime mistreating him, physically abusing him and leaving him to root for food in the dustbins – until he runs away. It’s a grim story that casts a melancholic fug on the audience, which is hard for laughs to penetrate, even if there is an occasional wry line or nice idea.

However, mostly it’s a collection of proper WTF? moments, sometimes delivered via some trippy, low-budget video. Sometimes the weirdness is mocked, which tends to work better since it reflects the audience’s befuddlement, while other times Houston is content to wallow languidly in the peculiar.

This is not a story that’s in any rush to be told, with events unfolding a torpid pace, further emphasising the doped-out mood. Haunting songs do the same but achieve nothing in advancing the show, so feel like way to spin out a single idea to three minutes.

The pallid atmosphere is set by the unrelated way this thirtysomething Glaswegian opens the show, in the guise of a stand-up so nervous he appears on the verge of tears with every weak joke that whimpers out, yet another take on the shy comic that has become a familiar trope for comedians who would like to be thought alternative.

Quite some twisted invention has gone into dreaming up Houston’s grim alternative world, but there needs to be more application to make it work and to engage the audience, beyond basking in its own desolately wistful mood.

Review date: 11 Aug 2015
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Just the Tonic at The Mash House