At first it was difficult to form an opinion of Tony Carter, as he was jumping around so much and talking so fast that all I could see was Lee Evans with a Geordie accent. Although he didn’t calm down at any point throughout the hour-long performance, it really did get better and better, as he started to get into his act.
Carter bases a lot of his material around music and it is his quest to find the happiest song in the world (the theme tune from Dogtanian is the current forerunner). This isn’t a particularly original concept, yet Carter has managed to carve his own niche and it’s easy to forgive him. Actually, given his flamboyant energy, it would be hard to pin anything on him.
While the musical search isn’t the main theme of the show, Carter is at least consistent about one thing – his humour. It falls into two distinct camps, extremely daft and extremely dark, with the latter being the far superior brand.
The only thing that let the show down was Carter’s insistence in having a three-minute interval – a period that is too short to go to the bar, yet long enough to jar the performance. Possibly he just needed a pee but this break does disrupt the action and it takes Carter a while to get back into his flow. This by no means ruined the show, but it certainly could have done without it. Overall though, I’d say that this is one of the highlights of the Fringe this year.
4/5
Becky Stone
