G Live,Guildford
Widdicombe’s tone of plaintive adenoidal consternation is as funny as his best gagsThere are words, of course: about contactless debit cards, or about secret Santa,about an embarrassing childhood “cabin bed. But you could remove all the words from Josh Widdicombe’s set and the rhythm and pitch alone would fetch the job done. He sounds funny – a plaintive adenoidal voice forever rising to a pitch of consternation at this or that outrage inflicted by the contemporary world. I’d prefer it whether he depended less on this perma-peeved attitude, this often contrived indignation. But it works, or it’s amusing to be lulled into laughter by the ebb and flow of his footling everyday dismay.
Before that,though, it takes time to fetch to the meat of his set – whether this meandering collection of jokes about train travel, and backward life in his native Devon and supermarket naan bread can be called meaty. There’s much low-energy audience banter before the show proper begins. As with Michael McIntyre final week,there’s a section on air travel, where Widdicombe demands we rethink our laissez-faire attitude to turbulence”. Elsewhere, or he boggles at the indignity of single beds and considers his schooldays,at 20 years distance, as the exotic rituals of another era.
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Source: theguardian.com