Phil Nichol: Welcome to Crazytown

For one hour each evening during the festival, 5 York Place ceases to house The Stand. It’s not August 2010 any more, either. Instead, audiences find themselves transported to Bertha’s Jazz Bar in 1970s Baltimore, bearing witness to this, the magnum opus of Phil Nichol’s obnoxious jazz poet Bobby Spade.

This is wildly ambitious stuff, taking the form of an hour-long epic poem that snakes its way through a nightmarish urban landscape, following our glue-huffing protagonist as he wakes up dead and embarks on a quest to find his killer. Nichol saturates the story in lurid detail, introducing us to all manner of freaks and perverts along the way; it is almost Joycean in scale. As Spade, Nichol is a sight to behold, twitching, bug-eyed and reptilian as he spits a string of syllables to the sound of a three-piece band.

Those expecting a high laugh rate will most likely walk away disappointed – this is best appreciated with an ear for Nichol’s verbal dexterity, the colour of the poem’s characters and the energy of his performance, rather than the calibre of individual gags. In short, it’s near impossible to situa this alongside the other comedy shows on offer this year, and the familiar club surroundings with daylight leaking in deny it the theatricality it requires.

An unbalanced compromise between the poetic and the comedic elements leaves the audience stranded, and as a result Spade (or Nichol – it’s unclear) ends up screeching his frustrations at their unresponsiveness. This is a heroic effort – just not a successful comedy show.