Review: Paul McDaniel – Butter Beans

Paul McDaniel's is not one of those Fringe shows about mental health, he assures us – it’s about butter beans. It’s also about the loneliness of lockdown, online radicalisation and counselling apps (with more than a brief appearance from Skeletor), so it’s a lucky coincidence that the pulses at issue can also operate as a metaphor. 

By acknowledging and exaggerating that metaphor from the show’s opening, McDaniel exposes and plays with an age-old comedy trope in an hour that is both enjoyably silly and – in more ways than one – effectively meta. The butter beans at the heart of the hour find themselves there when McDaniel plays a failed audition tape for the role of a shopkeeper whose butter beans have been stolen, the first use of multimedia in an hour which goes on to elevate its inclusion beyond just a useful gimmick to a central tenet of the show. Some of the biggest laughs come from these elements and McDaniel ably pulls off a sometimes difficult balance of punchlines, tech and timing.

He is also a capable comic in the more straightforward stand-up sections, self-deprecating and self-confessedly awkward in his delivery. All in all, this is a fun Fringe hour which is not just about mental health, but not only about butter beans either.