Adam Vincent in Adamland [FringeTIX]
Adam Vincent @ The Tuxedo Cat
7:00pm, Sat 28 Feb 2009
I first saw Adam Vincent waaaaay back in 2006, and remembered thinking “check him out in a couple of years.” He was on the shortlist last year, but illness saw me bail out of the opportunity to catch one of his shows; this year, however, I felt compelled to make good my (internal) promise.
Now, the Tuxedo Cat was a hot and stuffy room at 7pm – clearly, the heat of the day had not yet dissipated. So when Vincent appeared onstage wearing a suit (looking very much like a younger, thinner, taller version of my accountant), I began thinking of how much he’d be suffering (bam). Of course, the other two barbs of a triple-pronged attack were the generally dead crowd (thwack), and the fact that maybe half that crowd was family and friends… including his Dad (bocko).
But Vincent did his best regardless. Opening with some charming material about his Mum bricking kittens, he followed up by introducing Adamland – that place in his head where all the weird ideas are. There’s a tale or two about his ability to cope with violence, his predilection for looking in other people’s windows (“it’s not creepy if you have momentum”), and a delightful use of Bambi as a metaphor for the clitoris.
And that last bit is where Vincent’s act doesn’t really gel for me; he’s a relatively quiet comedian, kind of like a gentler(!) Adam Hills. But he never really runs with the joke, never takes it all the way; he’ll venture somewhere crude (the Bambi/clitoris thing, or his pissing-in-the-shower bit), but seems content to revel in the giggles obtained from the crassness of the phrasing. There’s no second act to his jokes, and for some reason I’m expecting one.
Throughout the show, he keeps mentioning that, if his comedy career doesn’t work out, he’ll have to keep up his “other” career as a nurse. Whilst I’d hate to see that happen, he needs to get a bit of depth into his material – because, as a one-shot or shock comedian, I’m not sure he’s gonna cut it.