Tony Law: Mr Tony's Brainporium

★★★

archive review (edinburgh) | Read in About 2 minutes

121329 original

By Catherine Sylvain

Published 21 Aug 2010

This job can sometimes be a little taxing so it's a relief when Tony Law announces "I'm reviewing myself". Alongside all his jokes, Law offers a critic's running commentary that turns out to be the funniest part; "After a lengthly riff about pirates, Law surprised us with some hard-hitting political stuff".

Self-effacing and self-aware to the utmost, Law undermines any objections to his slapdash style until you're forced not to think and just enjoy it. It's an ingenious feature of his comedy but as the smoke of all his sly self-references clears, you notice that there is little else to it. Many of his jokes outside their frame of irony fall flat and leave the audience a tad baffled. Yet when Law's unique mix of the surreal and and the satirical works, it's fantastic.

The 40-year-old Canadian takes to the stage in a skin-tight black morphsuit because, "I don't like clothes getting in the way of my art", and his art is very much the subject of the show. He rips into other methods of comedy; observational, anecdotal, and makes no pretence at his comedy being ad-libbed. "I'm sure it's become apparent that I have a team of writers behind me".

Except Law clearly doesn't, but it's this rambling and poorly connected manner to his comedy that makes it so endearing. He is the antidote to slick comedians smugly delivering word-perfect sets. So what if Law's piece about Russian Revolution cows came with no context? The biggest laughs are when he points this out.