Canada’s finest Tom Stade had his gig at The Stand in Edinburgh last night. The show was highly anticipated* but somehow didn’t live up to my expectations.
Stade has a wonderfully observational curve to his comedy in which he has the audience laughing at themselves and memories that are triggered by his material. One of the many brilliant things about Tom’s comedy is the way in which he involves the audience in his routine and has them falling at his feet. His material is also very very valuable in the sense that he toys with really tender subjects, such as the poverty in Africa, and transforms these problems in to a more managable state and heightens the awareness of these problems- and seconds after I’d jotted this down during the gig, he addresses this fact himself. Whether this is to avoid too much controversy with his upsetting material or if he just simply felt the need to defend his routine is not clear. Either way, he managed to slide off on a tangent, and for me, this was the downfall of his show. Having already seen Tom Stade live, I knew some of his material so I easily picked up on the fact that he was missing out punchlines everywhere. The audience was almost split between those who hadn’t seen him before and were simply enjoying his still very impressive set despite his mistakes, and those who were already part of his following and were expecting a lot more of him. It was quite clear that Tom had had a lot to drink, and although comedians are notorious for drinking during their shows and enjoying themselves, there is clearly a fine line between a good balance of nerve calming drinks and too many. He strayed too much for his material and I really don’t think he did himself justice but he was still very well received by the crowd and still a personal favourite of mine, I just hope the next time that I have the pleasure of seeing him live, he’s a little more sober.
15/2/11
*certainly for me anyway