Simon Evans: In the Money

For about 35 minutes tonight, Simon Evans genuinely feels like a comic for our times. For about 35 minutes, two separate machineries of performance work in tandem to create something quite exciting. For starters, here's an experienced performer—now aged 51—with the sort of comfortable, assured technique it's hard not to be very drawn in by. There are few on the circuit who can craft such beautifully misanthropic twists of language, or deliver them with such practiced disdain. The sustained and inventive attack on his young children comes as a particularly guilty pleasure. No, really, they take a delicious hammering.

Secondly, he's occupying a space which, right now, seems oddly apposite. Evans' is a comedy of unfashionable pragmatism – specifically, here, the economics of home ownership. Don't be fooled: these aren't tales of suburban faux ennui. There's a keen edge, but it's miles from the polarised shouting of our current news cycle, and it feels refreshing.

But from minute 36, the ratings on Evans' mortgage book start to look shaky. He's tried to cram in far too much here, and at a point where the show should build to a crescendo, it instead canters awkwardly through an over-long agenda. Comic poetry gives way to functional prose. Early on Evans tells us that the two things we need to understand are: leverage and compound interest, and at around minute 56, compound interest gets a scant mention. There's a joke to be made here, but I've run out of time and momentum to make it.