Carte Blanche – Voodoo Rooms
August 2-24 (15:05)
Burt Williamson is trying to improve himself. Hitting his 30’s, physical health conditions, emotional eating, an overactive ego, unhealthy competitiveness, and growing up in a small West Country town have all taken their toll on this touring stand up. This translates into, at times, wonderfully droll, surreal, Stewart Lee-esque takes on subjects ranging from farmers markets, ‘fowl fashion’, rescue pets, chronic pain and the human body. Throughout the show his unique observational take and bizarre riffs are engaging, though the performance, on this occasion, sometimes undercuts the strength of his material and unique stylings.
Hailing from ‘a town so boring that if you’re under 60 you get 40-yard stares’, hasn’t hampered Burt’s ability to spot a social idiosyncrasy and mine it for laughs. If anything, this sense of growing up in an area so under-stimulating seems to have inspired some of his flights of silly fantasy. ‘Wasp bread’, ‘chicken scarves’, and supermarket brands engaging in ‘coercive control’ are some of the beautiful Izzard-esque delights to feature in the Imaginarium of our performers mind, and these oddball delights are sprinkled throughout the set. He flips between these engaging glimpses into his psyche, self referential fourth wall breaking ‘fake stories’, and material focused on his ultra-competitiveness, and ego driven responses to the often debilitating effects of a slipped disk. Only Burt could use this ‘disability’ to enter into a game of ‘diagnosis top trumps’.
The audience is on the edge of it’s seat throughout, wondering whether each new section will be bizarre, insightful, or deprecating. It’s a shame then that, at times, the punchlines are slightly rushed or delivered with a lack of clarity. He delivers what is ‘the best joke of the set’ at one point, admonishing us for not laughing harder, in that classic Stewart Lee audience bating style, unaware that the words making up said punchline were indistinguishable to the crowd. There is excellent material, and fantastically droll painting of the world through his eyes, I’m sure that delivered exactly as Burt wished the ‘best joke’ would have got the laughs it deserved. Incredibly cleverly constructed sections about vulnerable swans, patriotic driving and ‘the bard tradition’ of stand up allow Williamson to really flex his comedic muscles, and the pacing of these sections is beat-perfect. When he switches to straight up observational comedy, an ability to pull in esoteric references to feudalism, social capital and allegorical alliteration elevates this material significantly from standard ‘garlic bread’ fare. It’s clear that a lot of time has been spent crafting and editing his words to wring every potential ‘topper’ from his subjects.
He finishes the set with a genuinely captivating tale about online chess, which treads an incredibly fine line of taking the audience down a very dark path but instead ends with a ‘tablecloth pull’ reveal that has us laughing once again at Burt’s hubris. The material, and the mind that created it, are top level stuff. If the delivery can match that level, then there’s a bright future ahead for this always fascinating, creative, and off the wall thinker.
Ewan Law
themumble.uk 