If like your comedy to make observations about life that have you rolling around chortling with red faced recognition then you may feel disappointed at a Simon Munnery show. If you like your comedy to include multimedia, to question the boundary between the role of performer and audience or to challenge the concept of comedy itself, then you might have felt quite alone until Simon Munnery came along.
Yet, as Munnery points out at the beginning of the show, although we are all here together, we are all really alone. Yes, it’s that kind of show.
In ‘Fylm’, Munnery repeats the same format as last years ‘Fylm-Makker’; he sits in the middle of the audience facing a large screen upon which he projects his face, intercut with handmade drawings on a table in front of him, which he animates himself. Although animates is quite an elaborate description for some of the skits which largely require chins on sticks and pencil drawings with missing legs.
This is not to negate the skill behind the concept. Munnery, is more ideas man than craftsman and what he lacks in draughtsmanship is more than made up for in philosophical retorts and imaginative flights of fancy and adds to the shows charm.
During the space of an hour we are taught Pythagoras theorem in the style of Mr T, introduced to a Venn diagram explaining the overlap (or lack of) between comedy and art and talked through an audience gauge. Also, conveniently enough, we are given a handwritten review of the show. I whole-heartedly agree with Munnery that the show is very, very, very, very, very funny and also quite acceptably not very funny. Half way through the show, Davy Willis provided a lovely musical interlude; a song without any jokes. Which is surely the most boundary-challenging thing a comedian could do.
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