Sam Simmons – Fail

The first sign that something’s not quite right comes barely two steps into the venue. Australian Sam Simmons waits by the door: flat cap, thick moustache, denim shirt… boxer shorts. He takes his place between two banners crowded with seemingly random words – and promptly, jarringly, he ambles into an opening comprising mundane observations and easy jibes about his appearance. Thankfully, it’s a ruse.

When the lights go down, Simmons plunges us into a nightmarish game-show scenario. A booming voiceover torments him with increasingly meaningless questions to which there is rarely a right answer. He rocks in his seat, clawing his thighs, gurning, pouting and winking as each response reveals a masterful, unpredictable inversion of logic, sporadically giving way to sudden episodes of prop-heavy lunacy. His dances, which interrupt the action as though involuntarily, are obscene and graceless; his songs spiral exponentially into madness.

The reception Simmons meets depends not so much on acquired taste as a black-and-white matter of preference. The walkouts starts early. He takes it in his stride, cheerfully escorting a couple to the exit with the ease of a man who’s seen it a hundred times before. Those who stick it out are justly rewarded, as the set goes from baffling to hilarious to hypnotic. 

“Silly’s a bit out of fashion right now,” Simmons signs off. “They can go get fucked.”

Tonight, ‘they’—presumably his more self-consciously cerebral, more widely esteemed contemporaries—look positively dull. The audience seems concussed as they pick their way past a stage strewn with plastic toys and breakfast cereal. Simmons, smiling politely by the door, sees them out. Job done.