Has a great deal of pun: Tim Vine
To admit up front, for a long, long time I’d held onto a rather miserable preconception of what Tim Vine’s “wacky” antics would amount to, so seeing him on The Joke-amotive was something I most certainly wasn’t looking forward to, even if to many others it’s a fantastic load of pun.
However, I already found myself on board within minutes of Vine’s timely arrival onstage to a buffoonish musical routine, a box of props ready to make its mark, the comedian prancing around while pondering: “Is it a joke? Is it a train? It’s both!”
It seemed a case of no train, no gain, and from then on it was a non-stop solid hour of puns, occasionally punctuated by other gloriously silly musical moments, the jokes coming so thick and so fast that by laughing you were constantly in danger of missing the next gag entirely, as Vine let off steam. As he said himself early on (before launching straight into another one-liner): “Can you imagine how I’m going to do this for an hour? Well, I’m going to…”
The undertaking of what Vine has attempted has to be admired; his routine is so densely packed with carefully prepared material that at one point when he goes off the rails - after being interrupted by a heckler - he has to get an audience member to remind him of where he was in the set, and there were more punch-lines flying forth from the stage than some comedians will produce in their entire career.
Lazy observational comedy this most certainly is not, and the energy is infectious enough to leave a silly grin on the face well beyond the performance, proving that he won’t need to be retraining for a new vocation any time soon. Asking us what we thought of the Chinese Dynasty – he thinks it’s very badly dubbed – along the way he also revealed some thoughts on the credit crunch: “The banks are doing a sterling job nowadays…”
It was all the sort of material I thought would have me rolling my eyes, except instead I was enjoying it far too much to think about any weary expressions of cynicism. Despite me fearing that I’d have been none too pleased with the journey foisted upon me by friends, I have to admit that I’d had a tremendous amount of fun by the time I reached the end of the Vine.
Tim Vine - The Joke-amotive is on at Pleasance Courtyard at 8.43pm until August 30 (not including 18).
