one4review | On 15, Aug 2023

One of the Alternative Comedy Memorial Society’s permitted heckles is “we appreciated what you’re trying to do!”, and another is “encourage!”, both of which I would like to shout sincerely at Mr Breen’s firmly alternative show, which needs his audience to achieve its full potential, and unfortunately they haven’t all found him on the same day yet. His is a sort of cumulative comedy, funny precisely because it isn’t, and with a critical mass of the correct audients, this show will be gold.

Mr Breen is wary of being judged against a standard he isn’t even aiming to meet. While this show might look, in a dim light, a bit similar to traditional stand up comedy, with one liners and rapid topic-hopping, that resemblance is only there so that Mr Breen can subvert it entirely and twist it so much it’s something entirely different.

He’s doing his own thing because he believes in it, and that does come though, despite the fact he delivers the whole show in an almost monotone. Somehow he manages to keep enough energy in the show that I was surprised we’d reached the end. Ostensibly this show is a pushback against the assertion that ‘you can’t say anything anymore’; except Mr Breen has pushed to absurdity, and decided that to prove you can he’ll deliver a comedy show comprised of anti-jokes.

This might be a three star review, but please keep going, I really appreciate what you’re trying to do.

Reviewed by Laura

Just the Tonic at the Caves
16:40
Until 27th