Adam Hess: Feathers

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"Brevity is the soul of wit", so the saying goes. Feathers gives you the impression that Adam Hess has it framed on his bedroom wall. It's a frenetic hour with what seems like 90 minutes of material crammed in, but in his whistlestop tour of anecdotal hallmarks he finds enough laughs to sustain the momentum. 

Buzzing about on stage like a man desperate to avoid the lull of silence, he recounts a series of improbable capers from his personal and family life. The cringe-fest dating stories are so ornately assembled that it's difficult to verify their authenticity, but we're here for the craft, not factual accuracy. He's had his fair share of unfortunate romantic experiences either way. 

He's got a boyish charm that helps paper over the various instances where he trips over his own words, and most of the jokes revolve around his own sense of inadequacy. They're endearingly told, but there's not quite enough hits to countenance the number of misses. Perhaps if he just kept the hits, and told them slowly to fill out the hour, he'd have the perfect show. His likeability and gift for anecdotes make him a comic with all the tools to go further.