Damien Crow: The World According to Damien Crow

Nobody understands Damien Crow. A Glaswegian goth/metal nut, he dwells in deeps of thought the rest of us couldn't possibly hope to access. And if you think you know your avant-garde, sinister underground music, well, Crow is way ahead of you there too. As for his father...

The World According to Damien Crow is more a sophisticated show than it looks upon first glance. On the surface, Crow can be read as a self-obsessed, adolescent, black-clad, posturing nerd. His constant juxtaposition of the self-proclaimed, elevated artist with the humdrum, commonplace world of his Glasgow family and contemporaries is what shapes the strong material the show. Imagine a doomed would-be Romantic era artist with delusions of genius being dropped into twenty-first century Scotland, and you get the picture.

Crow takes his time assembling the scaffolding for the really powerful jokes, but when they finally arrive, the effect is potent. A slide show of a family funeral is painfully funny, as is the interactive goth-accordion musical climax. What a world this is.