It seems odd that one of the most tech-savvy comedians was notable by his absence from the social media outlets through which other acts became ubiquitous during the pandemic. Yet Mat Ewins says at the outset of the meticulously bonkers Danger Money that he’s always been about the live setting. Given how the next hour is experienced as a deluge of images, sounds, and idea that wouldn’t have an iota of the impact as bite-sized TikTok videos, it’s hard to disagree.
Right from the off, the pace is breakneck. Within a few minutes Ewins has entered the stage with his head encased in a box, two massive screens on either side broadcasting his face, shown a screamingly funny video gag about cunnilingus (Ewins’ girlfriend, who pops up in several videos, surely deserves the status of, ‘long-suffering), gone off a diatribe about Sky and their refusal to option his crime drama ‘Good Cop, Bad Cop’ (complete with clips), and shown why he was fired as an animator from the Fifa games.
The sheer effort Ewins has clearly put in to the most fleeting of gags is seriously impressive. Even the most throwaway of these must have taken hours, if not days, to shoot, edit, and manipulate. They don’t all land, but such is the pace at which he hurls his ideas, the hilarity becomes cumulative. The effect is something akin to Tippi Hedren enduring wave after wave of flapping crows for hours on the set of The Birds. It’s exhausting. Even Ewins stage persona between these videos is wedged on rapid fire.
He does slow things down to play some games with his audience, in the guise of his ‘Danger Money’ game show. He uses modified exercise bikes to play a simple shoot-em-up, records people speaking backwards to see who best matches Dead or Alive‘s ‘You Spin Me Round‘, and completely reinvents the Beer Pong. While these are fun, and allow a modicum of breathing space, it’s definitely the wit, imagination, and dedication of his videos that are going to be remembered.
Perhaps the most impressive thing about Danger Money is, given how structured and planned it needs to be to even function, that Ewins is so good at using this technology that there is still room for a sense of thrilling spontaneity. This more than justifies his claim that the live environment is where he belongs. The risk for a show like this would be that it ends up like an amusing presentation. There is no danger of that here. The Mat Ewins experience is madcap, endlessly inventive, and undoubtedly most potent live.