Paul Black hasn’t performed live for a year and a half. So there was a sense of occasion to this show, evidenced by the fact that the multi-discipline Glaswegian comic can joke about confusion that he might be playing the Hydro arena next door, and not the more modest but still impressive Armadillo, and it not seem an entirely outlandish possibility.
All Sorts, a mix of stand-up and sketches featuring characters from his TikTok, in which he’s accompanied by his brother, Mark, and Alana Malone, has a slightly raw, cut and shunt feel to it, with the trio occasionally talking over each other’s lines. Still, there’s a rascally energy to the whole enterprise, with plenty of cartoonish daftness.
As Brendon Life Coach in a curtained wig and sparkling tracksuit top, Black gets to dial up the most preening, self-absorbed aspects of his persona. Running a dating agency and failing to pair up the hapless Keith (Mark) and to notice the misguided affections of his assistant Andrea (Malone), he’s a monster but still endearing. Even if Malone steals the sketch by giving it more understated pathos than it probably deserves.
Morphing into a Blind Date-style courtship contest featuring audience volunteers is a none-too-original development. Yet the Blacks match each other for insensitivities, the one snippy, the other oafish, with big, knockabout performances.
Similarly familiar, but probably the hit of the night, was Choices 4 Life, a painfully earnest yoof theatre outfit lecturing teens on the perils of vaping with a po-faced playlet. Sending up the crass moralising and attempts to be down with the kids of such well-meaning organisations, it isn’t subtle and lacks the depth of The League Of Gentlemen’s more layered Legz Akimbo by way of comparison. Yet the cautionary tale of Mikey, bowing to peer pressure, is played with winningly stupid, wide-eyed naivety by Black.
More considered and fully developed is Gh0stbØy, an effected, easily stung hipster from Bearsden, who, following a live social media meltdown, sets out to rediscover himself in Thailand. Like all of Black’s outsize alter-egos, he’s forever projecting main character self-regard. But he’s also probably the comic’s most seething study of pretension and class privilege, superficially embracing altruism and Eastern spirituality for entirely selfish reasons.
I can admire Black’s sketches but prefer his stand-up. The offhand ease of his delivery and the deceptively vulnerable, personal focus of his anecdotes give his self-aware egomania – turning his grandfather’s eulogy into a gig – an appeal that goes beyond their immediate naughtiness. Reflecting on his relationship with Mark, variously compared to that of the Minogues and Oasis, there’s a hint of genuine tension. Yet it’s amusingly expressed through the motivating energy of sibling rivalry, with the older brother’s burgeoning profile spurring Paul.
Preoccupied with XL Bully dogs and the aloofness of Edinburgh University students, and turned off by the stuck-up, Scottish xenophobia he encounters while dating in London, Black wears his working class chippiness and insecurities lightly.
Similarly, while he invests his father’s death and that of his dog’s with a degree of emotion and storytelling craft, he doesn’t stint on the jokes, not least in terms of affording both roughly comparable importance. As natural a comic on stage as he is online, Black’s potential appears considerable, though it feels like there’s still much more to be tapped.
.
Reviewed on 22 November 2024 | Image: Contributed
The Reviews Hub Score
Rascally sketches, stand-up
