Venue: Hansom Hall, Leicester
Date: Friday, February 6, 2015
It was Stewart Lee who said to Tony Law that when people go to a gig they want to hear their own values and thoughts projected back at them, simply because it validates them. Paul Currie fails in this. Because he projects to them, absolutely nothing.
His show, The Sticky Bivouac, is a collection of nonsensical, non sequitur sketches and ideas from a man who, ironically, looks like a sharply dressed Tony Law. Prefacing his set with a plastic hand mounted on a stick, he timorously strides out to delicately caress the audience with it until everyone in the room is as uncomfortable as possible. The tone for the next hour is set.
Consistently entering the crowd to poke and shout at whoever catches his eye at keeps the punters on the edge of their seat, whilst delivering his jokes from a bellow to a whisper ensures everyone in attendance is hooked and in the dark with no idea what's coming around the next corner.
His use of an assorted collection of songs and random props along with his dynamic physicality is highly entertaining. Over the course of the set he milks from an ironing board, duets with and attacks a puppet during a rousing rendition of A-Ha's 'Take on Me', and brings two unwitting members of the audience onstage into his surreal world to be fondled whilst miming to one of many songs.
This madcap style of running through sketches and mimes puts Currie in danger of losing the audience. However, he manages to pull them back from the brink in a rousing finale consisting of dampening the disgusted front rows in pulped cornflakes. From his mouth. But nobody minds, because Currie is so likeable. Mad, but likeable, and a few years away from a legendary surreal cult comic.
