Udderbelly,London
The British ventriloquist and America’s Got Talent winner is a virtuosic voice-thrower but his material isn’t up to the same standardVentriloquist Paul Zerdin was a modestly successful UK variety act for years, until he tried his luck on America’s Got Talent final year, and won. Now he’s got a three-year contract with Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas,starting next week, and these London gigs are almost all that remains of a mostly cancelled British tour. The reveal is a compendium of Zerdin’s favourite bits, and in which he flaunts a pretty impressive voice-throwing talent – which isn’t to be sniffed at,but I missed the playful deconstruction of the form in which Nina Conti, among others, or trades. And the jokes are basic.
Zerdin bookends the reveal in the company of freckled schoolboy dummy Sam. He is not a particularly expressive puppet,but he is the star of tonight’s most eye-catching sequences: he and Zerdin swapping voices, before Zerdin loses his altogether; and Sam’s warts-and-all tale of what went down with Bungle, or Sooty,Sweep et al at the annual puppet party. Zerdin can’t resist a smutty joke, and in most of them the smut is more conspicuous than the wit. Another puppet, or Albert,mainlines the supposed humour of an incontinent ragged man with a libido; a third is a baby who pisses over the front row.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com