STAND-UP
Showing @ Pleasance Courtyard until 29 August @ 23:00 (not 19-21)
When a performer walks on stage butt-naked with nothing but a sandwich board to very ineffectively cover what little modesty they have, you know you’re in for something a little bit risqué. New to the stand-up scene after TV stints on the likes of Big Brother’s Big Mouth, Jeff Leach doesn’t disappoint, with an overtly macho subject matter of sex, sex, bodily functions and more sex.
If there’s one thing Leach does extremely well it’s improvising; there’s no doubt that when he says he’s only done a third of his material, it’s not far off the truth. There’s audience interaction aplenty, and at times it feels more like you’re watching a mate mucking around in his front room than the more formal confines of stand-up. But you’d be mistaken in assuming that this automatically makes for a relaxing atmosphere. Uber confident and with an undeniably powerful stage presence, he flirts outrageously with anyone in a dress, physically embracing the better looking ones and insisting they pull up his underwear over his naked torso. To his credit he’s a great actor, but this makes it all agonizingly convincing as the lines between his performance and the reality of him genuinely trying to get his leg over blur. It really is not a comfortable experience for anyone – particularly for a woman – who wants to sit anonymously in the shadows without the fear of being accosted.
That said, you’d be hard pushed to find anyone with quite as much boundless energy as Leach. Despite chugging down the best part of a bottle of wine during the course of his set, he still manages to come across as professional, and with his TV experience behind him it’s surprising he isn’t drawing in bigger crowds. If he can manage to contain his insatiable desire to slimily suck onto women like a leech (pardon the pun), he has the potential to eventually project himself into the big names of popular culture’s stand-ups.
Comments