After scooping the prestigious Fosters Award last year for his show Spaghetti for Breakfast, it’s apparent Sam Simmons is not willing to rest on such shiny laurels. With a stage crammed with oddball props and a 200-seat theatre to fill, Simmons busies himself from the outset by escorting attendees to their seat, either through hand-holding, piggy-backing or over-the-threshold-carrying. This very eccentricity, energy and audience interaction will characterise the entire show.
The man is constantly scurrying around the stage, stripping down to his boxers on more than one occasion and using all manner of props and crutches to elicit silly laughs from the enraptured audience. The show purports to be based on a theme of birds (with Simmons apparently an ex-zoologist) but in reality, the narrative is threadbare – a fact which Simmons himself acknowledges and appears to delight in.
Of course, the absurdity of the whole thing won’t appeal to everyone, especially when Simmons throws in gags about child abuse, paedophilia and Nazism. The whole undertone is so wacky and off-the-wall that these never even threaten to cross the line, but even so, it’s clear that his brand of silliness isn’t universally loved. About halfway through the performance, three disgruntled audience members make a sharp exit, which provides the cue for the wheels to come trundling off Simmons’ clown car.
He doesn’t baulk from chasing the escapees out of the door and after a brief exchange outside, comes back to report that they insulted him deeply, prompting a veritable meltdown for the remainder of the show. With a show that’s subtitled ‘Not a People Person’ , it’s hard to discern whether Simmons’ refusal to let the subject drop is an act or genuine. Whatever the truth, his constant interruption of his nonsensical skits with complaints about the audience’s lack of enjoyment in his antics begin to grate, especially when the majority are in stitches.
It might simply be that Simmons thrives most when things go wrong. If so, he certainly pounced upon the walk-outs with enough vigour to suggest relish, but his obsession overwhelms the rest of the material somewhat. The puerility and madcap nature of his show will win over most who attend – for those that it doesn’t, they should be allowed to fuck off in peace and let the rest of us bathe in his barmy brilliance.