Comedian Dies In The Middle Of Joke

102793 original

Anyone familiar with murder mystery evenings, in which the audience members are also participants, will quickly grasp the original but only patchily effective concept of Comedian Dies In The Middle Of A Joke. Asked to picture ourselves in a seedy north London comedy club in 1983 (a fair stretch of the imagination in the warm, organic surroundings of the Pleasance Dome), we are taken back to the scene of local comedian Joe 'Pops' Pooley's final set. After a disastrous string of failed half-jokes, which will eventually become embedded in the audience's mind, a gun fires and the comic falls dead. The entire scenario will play out six times, as these events exist in a time loop, and each time it is reset, the audience changes tables and assumes the identities of different characters in the crowd, not to mention Pooley himself.

Make no mistake: for anyone attending this show, there is a fair chance they will be required to take to the stage themselves to perform Pooley's doomed final monologue via autocue, which veers from cheesy punchlines to a grimly nihilistic tirade against the unforgiving and increasingly elaborate heckles that emanate from an emboldened, 'in-character' audience. While it may provide momentary amusement for those who get into the spirit, the show is based on an enormously uncertain premise, which requires those watching to do most of the work and grows repetitive very quickly. Though executed in a unique manner, there are not nearly enough ideas on display, and it depends entirely on your indulgence.