Demi Lardner @ Underbelly Cowgate
Go bonkers in the basement with Demi Lardner
On the face of it, Demi Lardner’s show Look What You Made Me Do is the story of Gavin, a bizarre and distracted man locked in his basement with only a customer service representative on the other end of a phone to keep him company. Maybe he starts to lose his mind during the following days, or maybe it was never there to begin with. This set-up is barely worth dwelling on, however, since the bulk of Lardner’s show is made up of discrete skits involving flashing lights, horse heads, diary entries and strange, awkward moments of audience interaction. At times these feel like they are bordering on randomness for randomness’s sake, but in all we’re treated to a kind of technicolour surrealism that feels like early Mighty Boosh turned up to eleven.
For an hour we’re stuck in Gavin’s basement with him and locked away from anything approaching politics, religion or celebrity, and all that’s left is silliness and smut. Lardner breaks the fourth wall constantly, at times clambering into the audience or running along offering high-fives, and gives us a kind of comedy that asks you to not look for anything more complicated. But hidden in the scattergun approach are some really sturdy gags, from an elongated conversation based on a single pun to a complex visual joke that clearly took a lot of setting up. Expect to be baffled and relentlessly tickled and you’ll leave a very happy audience member indeed.