Simon Munnery: Fylm

Simon Munnery’s brand of alternative comedy has always been distinctly left-field, but his latest experiments are more unique than ever. Similar to 2012’s Fylm Maker, Munnery ignores the stage and instead conducting the show from a booth among the crowd where a camera projects his face on to a large screen as he creates ‘a live film’ by messing around with a series of cardboard cut-outs and puppets. Honestly, I’m not sure it even qualifies as stand-up; it’s definitely an intriguing play with the conventions of the art, but it does struggle for laughs.

Today he’s at his best when his face occupies the screen, delivering wonderfully meta-material on how he might fulfill normal requirements of stand-up without actually facing the audience – a giant finger picking on the front row for instance. It’s smart stuff without being overly intellectual, a balance he often struggles to find; a lengthy discussion of Pythagoras’ theorem is neither funny or particularly interesting. Several of his small cardboard plays are also missing punchlines and at this point it seems like Munnery is short on actual material, giving several minutes over to guitarist Mick Moriarty for an enjoyable but humourless song seems to confirm that.

Munnery is a well established Fringe fixture and he continues to be a wonderfully creative mind, but this show amounts to little more than an interesting concept with some severely under-developed pissing about to pad out an hour. A interesting idea but I do hope he returns to the stage next year.