@ Just The Tonic @ The Mash House, until Sun 30 Aug @ 12:40
This isn’t a comedy show. This isn’t even a show. This is an opportunity to sit and chat with a timid, middle-aged Asian fella about how unfair life is.
Silcox opens, standing clear of the mic like it smells bad, by explaining what a fourth wall is, then telling us he’s going to break it, then telling us that the premise of his show – women are banned because they’ve treated him so badly – is just a ruse to sell the show, a show that doesn’t seem to exist, and may or may not have started.
Silcox has indeed been treated badly; it’s just not necessarily by women. It emerges, once formal proceedings have ground quickly to a halt, that his mild manners and kind heart have been repeatedly exploited in the workplace.
After five minutes and six walkouts (the funniest thing that happens in the hour is the departees feigning having another show to see), he sits down with the two that remain – The Wee Review and a retired Australian lady – for some life coaching. Anna (not her real name) even supplies him with a couple of not half bad gags which he duly notes for next time.
Awarding a star rating to this is irrelevant. At this stage, there’s no show to rate. The basic point that Silcox is possibly trying to make – that life dicks you about if you’re one of the nice guys – is painfully, obviously true, but maybe the stand-up stage is not the place for Silcox to rectify that.
Definitely buy the guy a drink, or go sit and chat (he’s desperate to make us a mid-show cuppa). He’s a lovely bloke, and even if he doesn’t have a show to perform, he has proved one very important point: modern life has created a lot of very lost souls, and what as a society, do we do about it? Feck all.