one4review | On 06, Aug 2025

The only negative in this show is the set up of the room: you can’t see all of the screen from everywhere. The screen isn’t a huge part of the show, however, and where it is used, it’s used – very much in character – by the cycling man to apply various business analyses to his marriage. A few things might be missed (laughter suggests they were funny), but nothing integral to the show. You can’t miss anything integral: the self-absorbed, self-important cycling man will ensure that.

I’ve never – thankfully – met a cycling man in real life, and after Kathy Maniura’s pithy and sharp caricature of such an irredeemable arse who’s never taken responsibility for anything in his life, I hope I never do. Ms Maniura doesn’t portray him as entirely unsympathetic, but he is ridiculous: in himself, and in the ridicule we’re invited to lay on him. It’s an excellent performance, complimented by everything else in the show: lighting, music, props, use of the audience, what is revealed and when and how.

It’s perhaps too good a performance: some audient faces wondering how this disaster of a man, so close to reality, could be considered funny. Throw the whole man out, why are we giving him any more of our time? That is one of the points of the show – besides achieving peak comedy – and all of our responses are justified and validated in the last, outrageous, line. This is an accomplished and complete gem of a show.

Reviewed by Laura
16:35 (1hr)
Pleasance Courtyard (Attic)
Until 24th (not 11th or 18th)