The Groggy Squirrel

This was the 3rd show that I saw with a Christmas theme and Christmas gifts passed to the audience, but it was the only one that didn’t have enough crackers for everyone. Perhaps intended. It was a bit hard for me to gage where this show was coming from. Was it satirising something or someone who was a crappy annoying comedian that I’m unfamiliar with, being from Australia, or was it just a lame, crappy annoying show? It’s often a fine line. It has received many raves from reviewers and last year’s version of the show was nominated for an If.Comedy award and it seemed that the middle aged people around me were enjoying it quit a bit.

The music set the scene, sad inappropriate Christmas tunes such as Ian Dury’s ‘Stop the Cavalry’ had me eager for the show to start. It began with Ivan having a little chat with us before he went ‘live’ to Cheshire Hill and North Derbyshire hospitals. Of himself Ivan explains: “I’m Bonkers! My wacky wind ups is what I’m famous for” but Ivan has been told to keep his nose clean this year by his boss after the messes he created and she had to clean up last year – or he risks losing his job. This is the flimsy pretext upon which the show rather lamely hung.

The show itself turned out to be a long tedious list of song requests by patients with snippets of the songs that were supposed to be hilariously inappropriate, but I found to be screamingly obvious, uninspired and mostly just cringe worthy in a bad way. Some examples; a heart bypass patient – song: ‘Building a bridge to your heart’, a patient ‘suffering from dwarfism’(is that a treatable disease by the way?) song: ‘Have a little patience’ a tribute to their sponsor, a company that makes KY Jelly – song: “Love really hurts without you”. Oh stop, my sides are splitting! It was relentless, broken only briefly by phone ins and chats with his best friend Stanley from the Morgue for whom he played ‘You’re as cold as Ice’. Of course.

The most impressive part of this show was it’s technical achievement, there was a lot going on in the tightly packed, fast paced show and all depended on timing which was spot on throughout. This probably had a lot to do with why Ivan recited most of his lines from the lap top in front of him. I got the impression that Tom Binn had chosen the songs to fit into his script using Google because he made the odd error such as naming the author rather than the singer of the song which destroyed any illusion of Ivan’s character as music geek.

This was a character piece where we learned way too little about the character to make the journey of feeble musical puns worthwhile. The show felt about 30 years old, which may be intended and so there could be nostalgia attached to it that I’m missing. I think this show was aimed at people in their 60s and above from Northern England and possibly 11 year old boys. Definitely not me.

Visit the Fringe Website for booking details.