Comedy / dave gorman
Review: Dave Gorman, Colston Hall
Comedy is big business – and the bigger the name, the less need for audiences to take a punt on. When it comes to Dave Gorman at the Colston Hall, you’re pretty much guaranteed 2,000 Gorman aficionados up for a night of antics and high jinks from the man who brought us Are You Dave Gorman, Googlewhack Adventure and My Life is Goodish.
With that in mind, the evening took an unexpected turn from the beginning in the form of unadvertised support act Nick Doody. Doody called it straight away: expecting Dave Gorman and getting someone most of the audience have never heard of makes for a tough gig.
Naming the elephant in the room, though, turned out to be a stroke of genius that gave Doody the license to play with potentially tricky material. Ranging from masturbation through to ISIS, Doody regularly had his audience holding their breath with fear – but he never crossed the line and always rewarded the room with a payoff that was worth the fear.
Gorman was a different beast. His audience knew him and often rewarded him with responses that may have left those less familiar in the dark. Graphs and pie charts were met with cheers and rapturous applause. The PowerPoint presentation is Dave’s thing: it’s what he has become known for on the comedy circuit, and in this respect he didn’t disappoint.
His latest show title – Dave Gorman Gets Straight to the Point* (The PowerPoint) – sums up the evening as a whole. It’s laboured. We get it, and any explanation that underlines the gag undermines the point.
Gorman’s topics range from parents on social media, via generational differences and the way we present ourselves, to knee thievery. All comedy gold and inevitably, Gorman’s take on it is worth seeking out. The trouble is, more often than not, he takes so long to set something up or is too focused on script and style that, by the time the payoff comes, it hardly feels worth it. This is particularly frustrating when you chip away at the waffle and delivery and realise that there’s some great material in there.
Tonight will please Gorman fans. The evening as a whole is a salutary lesson in the art of, every now and again, taking a punt on the lesser known.
Dave Gorman was at Colston Hall on Friday, 28 November.
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