Hot Toddy – Hot Toddy Lounge
Aug 9-25
23:00
Hot Toddy, on Jeffrey Street, just off the Royal Mile, has been open only a year or so, but there’s definitely a buzz about the place. Its decor is great, & it’s downstairs room classy – dominated by a big painting of the Green Man, the god of vegetation, on the back wall. Last night, directly in front of that image, in all his youthful glory, stood Tim Reeves, a young comic starting to make waves – there’s suddenly somebody, something, different springing onto the scene.
What are you doing here? This is Friday night, Prime Time Fringe?
Tim definitely has something special, as if he’d found a hidden cave on the Thalian mountain, inside which lie all sorts of golden comedy nuggets just scatter’d around the place quite copiously, waiting to be used. I mean, he’s taking the comedic lack of self-worth to whole new depths, simmering with a constant thematical refrain of ‘I don’t want to be here.’ It’s pretty hilarious stuff, with his character’s general lack of confidence deliver’d with everyday ease, but polish’d with silent panache, & cleverly control’d eccentricity.
When Tim is taking his well-sculpted anti-comedy to these new levels, the show is great, fantastic even – sophisticated daftness at its very best. It is only when he branches out into ‘jokes’ let’s say, entering a world of quiche, Russell Hobbs & audience interactions, that the vibe dips a little. Not too much, but enough to show how excellent his self-depracity really was.
If you leave, I don’t mind, I’ll just be jealous
For example, on the occasion of my attendance, he got himself involved in a chat with an audience member who has a giant African snail for a pet – nothing much came of the discussion really. Perhaps with other shows, other people, we might have found more of that comedy gold, & it’s up to Tim to mature into a comedian able to find treasure in all discussions.
He did find that treasure, however, when moving from his probably long-scripted set, into a discussion of the painting of the Green Man behind him. Like a lot of Tim’s stuff, this felt innovative, & in his quest for comedic victory he incorporated the battlefield terrain with an effortless naturality – a victory of course, he achiev’d. We were all won over, pretty much from start to finish, & I’ve a genuinely strong feeling that, after dropping some of the minor superfluities, Tim’s unique, refreshing & affable goofballerie will grow into something pretty special.
Damo
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