Writer: Adam Flood
Moving out, moving on, moving up – aren’t we all trying to evolve beyond our roots as we grow through adolescence and arrive in the big city (or a particularly musty Fringe venue) as a fully grown adult. Adam Flood seems to think so, and in his debut hour he mines his past to share some of his most noteworthy adolescent antics and self-discoveries, from his childhood in Stoke-on-Trent through his move to London as a young adult and into the present day.
In a punchy show coloured by musical interludes with a particularly effective – and expensive – auto-tune pedal, Flood traipses through tales from his wayward youth. He deals marijuana at school, trips on mushrooms at Leeds Festival, and plays bass in an indie band. When he arrives in London, he has quintessential millennial experiences like house-sharing with tech bros and working at a start-up. All such exploits were just successful enough to have carried him to the present: a burgeoning stand-up comedy career.
Throughout, Flood plays with crowd work to general success and his malleability is exciting to watch. He riffs off the audience to examine his relationship to truth-telling and its pitfalls, among other misadventures. Slight technical difficulties notwithstanding, it’s the shining moments of honesty, connection, and vulnerability emphasized by auto-tuned interludes that most command the audience’s attention, and laughs.
The show meanders a bit, with events presented chronologically but not always deftly linked. A tightening of transitions would allow for greater flow between the already-solid punchlines. Still, there is an intriguing reflectiveness in Flood’s style, a propulsive energy that makes it hard to look away. The audience’s attention is rewarded when that same reflectiveness is split open in a smashing musical finale, where Flood recontextualises the stories shared with added nuggets of truth. Here he shines.
Runs until 27 August (not 15th) 2023 | Image: Ross Fraser Maclean/ Studio RoRo
