Review: Jaz Mattu Returns

You have to admire Jaz Mattu's ambition. The Kent-based comedian and musician brings something unique to Edinburgh this year, a robotic plot device that will definitely stick in the mind long after slicker routines elsewhere have been forgotten. It's not his only innovation either: there's a video game, clever background films, numerous voiceovers, and a song about Rochester that may also linger, less happily.
  
The format is a quasi-play in which Mattu moves back home, to Kent, after struggling as a comic in east London. Via those varied videos and a series of interactive set-pieces he negotiates the perils of comedy-creating and dating from your dad's house. 
  
He's made the best of things in Edinburgh too, apparently: no audience on day one allowed for a full tech run-through, and it shows, as the myriad cues work impressively well. What could do with some work is the actual dialogue in between, and you do wonder if that became an afterthought with so much else to finish.
  
Some of those innovations could also be utilised better, in a Mat Ewins or Foxdog Studios manner – the video game he made needs added stakes, for example, to get the audience involved and extend the bit. But that robotic guest then arrives late on, and steals the show.