The Boy With Tape On His Face: More Tape

The Boy (aka Sam Wills) sits on a chair under spectral blue lights, gaffa-taped and blinking at an audience filing in to the tune of Danny Elfman. A voice warns that, if we are chosen, we must take part or we'll look "like a cock." And so The Boy begins to play. 

The entire Pleasance Grand is putty in his hands. Constructing lengthier routines than last year from a variety of props (loo roll, toothbrushes, hairdryers), the favourites from his Royal Variety Show performance are slotted between equally inventive new sequences, involving the audience as much as The Boy. With a point and a clap he selects participants who are both integral to the performance and treated with the sort of respect you rarely see at your average comedy gig. If you find yourself on stage, you're in safe hands. The Boy commands the stage effortlessly, and though ripping the piss out of the audience would certainly get him cheap laughs, he thankfully never takes this route. 

As he sets the groundwork for each routine it's, more often than not, impossible to guess the direction he's headed. Sometimes, just when you think it's done, he'll throw in a new prop, or get someone else on stage to transform the entire sequence. There may be one too many puppet-lip-synching routines (can puppets with no mouths lip synch?) but who cares when he's firing a plunger at a toilet seat hung from a man's head to set up a... we won't ruin it for you.   

This is comedy in its purest, simplest form: no confessional backstory, no swearing, no satire. Just back to basics inventiveness and, most importantly, fun.