Review by Paul Fleckney

The Piccolo tent is just the venue for both the frenetic, charismatic comedy of Goose, and his big broad-brush show, Hydroberserker. Goose – aka Adam Drake – is both our circus master-style host, and centre of it all. It’s his story he tells, of meeting the girl of his dreams, and trying to crack the code of the 'wrong' phone number she gives him.

As a show it feels like a realised vision: Drake has got himself a backing band to accompany the show, and he’s somehow nicked the set from Celebrity Squares for them all to sit in. Such elaborate (not to mention expensive) sets would normally be the domain of far, far, far bigger comics than Goose. In a way I admire that ambition. In another way it’s the most extravagant outlay this side of the Burj Khalifa.

Drake enlists the help of the greatest mind of them all – Dan Brown – to help with his investigation. Also roped in is an audience member, who is given a rigged-up phone to go out to the Assembly Square Gardens for … well, pretty spurious reasons. And that’s the main problem with the show: it’s too crammed full of tricks, techniques and red herrings, all of which somehow need justifying, and consequently the show as a whole suffers.

Hydroberserker is essentially a round-up of all the innovations that have come about at the Fringe in recent years – such as The Pin’s real-time writing of a script that’s shown on a big screen. Nothing wrong with that as such, and these aspects are all fun to watch in and of themselves, but they work so much better if they’re serving the central purpose of the show. The biggest example of this is a sketch about clocks which is repeatedly referenced and takes on totemic importance, even though its relevance to the show dangles by a thread. Eventually when we do get to see it, it’s by such contrived means it’s almost surreal. It’s as if the whole thing has been written backwards.

As it happens, Hydroberserker hangs together enough to be an entertaining show, and he gets the standing ovation that the feel-good ending is crying out for. Drake is a full-throttle, energising performer, racing through each story and sketch, whipping himself round between each one like a border collie chasing its tail. There are funny lines dotted throughout, and crowds respond to him and buy into his tale of heartbreak. It’s hard to really tell how good he is, though. You can barely reach him through the jungle of tricks. It’s like watching a footballer constantly doing stepovers.

By chance I saw Drake do a show in 2011 called The Life Doctor (which also starred Phil Wang) before he went on to form We Are Goose with Ben Rows. In some ways it was exactly the same as Hydroberserker – completely over-produced and too ambitious for its own good. Drake and his shows are far better now, but I suspect that the breakthrough he clearly craves will only come if he keeps things a bit simpler.

Review date: 17 Aug 2016
Reviewed by: Paul Fleckney
Reviewed at: Assembly George Square