An American in Scotland

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Alfred Williams Tells a Joke

Our next foray into The Fringe brought us to a small classroom at the Edinburgh College of Art and a comedic newbie named Alfred Williams.

His hour-long show consists of one joke: a shaggy-dog story involving a car break-down, a pink gorilla and a bell tower. Although the joke’s punch-line, following fifty-nine minutes-worth of ramblings, sub-jokes, and extraneous asides was actually good, getting there was a fight to keep from falling asleep. This was in small part because the room was warm and stuffy, but mostly due to Williams’s delivery, which was entirely too fast and acutely lacking in all the things that make good comedy, i.e., perfectly-timed pauses, voice impressions (or, at least, voice variation), humorous hand and body movements, etc. Williams entertained his audience (around ten of us) mostly by sitting on a stool and talking…and talking…and talking. One guy did seem to be enjoying himself – he laughed with unbridled enthusiasm throughout the show. It turns out that he was the show’s producer, which says a lot.

On the plus side, the few jokes I did happen to catch as his words flew past me were fairly high-brow and yes, funny. If he would just slow down a bit (cutting out some of the unfunny streams of consciousness to make room), his one-joke gimmick might work.

Although I can’t, with a clear conscience, recommend this show, providing open access for all performers is still The Fringe’s main directive – and what makes it so worthwhile.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Saw the same show and I would have to agree. Mr Williams seems to have a lot of energy and passion for the job, but sometimes its just TOO long a windy road he goes down.

6:41 pm  

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