Original Review:

Show Rating:

This contains the sort of utterly stoned ideas that are genius on the sofa but need ruthless editing if they are to be aired in the real world. If you enjoy listening to other people recount their surreal dreams for an hour at a time, this is the show for you.

It‚s an imaginatively staged fringe show, with a backdrop, side-stage, sparkle curtain and cute live animals. The ice-blue back cloth, with a small polar bear standing on a tiny ice floe in the distance, is clever shorthand for ‘this is Canada’. Putting tonylaw.co.uk‚ across it in nice script make sure you know who you’ve come to watch.

But what’s with the exaggerated sing-song delivery? He sounds like he‚s voicing a cartoon of a slightly simple Canuck. The jovial, folksy tone, combined with the animal stories, put me in mind of a disgraced children’s TV presenter.

The flights of fantasy, the world’s 37 time-travelling dogs, stories of black bears and painted tiger sharks in Islington, some digression about pineapples, the phone-calls with Audrey, the sweet-voiced polar bear (sounding not unlike Soo from Sooty and Sweep) –it all just goes to show that one man’s surreal is another’s random and half-baked.

Tony Law has a distinctive, likeable manner, and you’ll either love or hate his gentle, genial off the wall ramblings. There’s no middle ground.

Reviewed by: Julian Chambers