Stephen Carlin: Guilty Bystander

Once tipped by Stewart Lee as "one of the ten best comedians in the world ever", Edinburgh's own Stephen Carlin, quite simply, isn't on form with this effort. Loosely based around crime—more specifically, our general collective tendency towards lawful behaviour—Carlin's show makes little of a potentially rich theme in a performance that manages to feel both ramshackle and over-rehearsed at the same time.

Sure, there's some great moments: Carlin pulls off some great lines about the recent riots, for instance. But the laughs come few and far between. Audience participation sections go on for far too long – we understand why much later, but it's no payback for killing the mood. Oddly, while the material flits aimlessly between Carlin's chosen theme and his more generic routines, it's clearly well rehearsed. More than once, the performer forgets his lines, beginning a later section before finding his place. Spontaneous flights of comedic fancy are eminently forgivable, but in Guilty Bystander, Carlin appears simply to have prepared a poor script.

It's pretty characteristic of the show that its big final reveal comes as a bit of a damp squib. Not only is there barely the requisite buildup, but the moment itself is fairly underwhelming. There's no tension to diffuse; it is a structure without the ornaments. One can't help but feel that here is a great performer, plodding through a Fringe run he well knows is far from his best effort.