Damien Slash: Übermen

You do wonder why Damien Slash—real name Daniel Barker—bothered dragging his coterie of grotesques to the Edinburgh Fringe. A prolific uploader of comic YouTube videos, Slash now finds himself frantically changing costumes in the stuffy Pleasance Attic every afternoon, when he could be knocking out more skits and getting more hits back home. Is online content not the future after all?

Perhaps the web is just a means to an end for Barker, who certainly harks back to well-established TV character comics here, while also falling back on some seriously old jokes. An unpleasant sketch about a gambling addict ends with a "funny horse names" racing commentary, for example, an idea that should have been humanely destroyed years ago. And the horse names aren’t particularly amusing.

Barker begins the show—and greets the entering audience—as one of the Ideas Men, a talky concept that worked well on the web but here is pretty much a Steve Coogan tribute act, with the occasional splash of invention. Similarly, his socially-inept video gamer was watchable on screen due to sharp editing, but is wearyingly predictable on stage, as he passive-aggressively hits on a female audience member.

There are flashes of promise. By far the strongest section is his popular online mineral water critic, who closes the show in an enjoyably messy fashion. But the between-skits audio bits don’t work at all, so much so that it’s sorely tempting to do a runner while his back is turned. At least a live audience can’t leave nasty comments underneath.