Martin Mor: How Do You Like Your Blue-eyed Boy Mister Death?

A brush with mortality inspires some superbly retold acts of living life to the full.

★★★★
comedy review (edinburgh) | Read in About 2 minutes
Published 18 Aug 2013
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115270 original

After walking unscathed from a motorway crash earlier this year, Martin Mor has a new outlook on life. While not exactly a shrinking violet before, Mor began to live life to the full and it's this philosophy, appropriately paired with the Northern Irishman's huge energy, that forms the basis of this upbeat hour of storytelling.

From skydiving through new sexual explorations, to taking mind-expanding drugs in the Mexican desert, Mor shows us how he expanded his horizons after realising life was too short. Each experience is painted in beautiful, often lurid and on occasions brilliantly disgusting detail. Despite, to quote another review, him looking like a "rapist Father Christmas", Mor's likeability is as massive as the man himself and he drives the show through sheer force of personality.

The overly frequent references to turning the crash and his subsequent adventures into material have the effect of pulling us out of the world he is creating and imply a cynicism that it's impossible to believe he possesses, but it's only a rare mistep in a superbly crafted show. 

Closing by showing us pictures of his badly mangled car brings us back down to earth with a bump. Aside from reminding us of how close we came to losing such a talent, it's an appropriately thought-provoking and poignant end to a show which, despite its raucousness has an important lesson to impart. If we could all live our lives more like Martin Mor, the world would be a much better, happier place.