One of the hit shows of this year’s Edinburgh festival Alex Horne’s visit to the Brighton Comedy Festival followed a complete sell-out run in Edinburgh and apart from a few chairs marked ‘wet seat’ (had the previous occupants pee’d themselves laughing I thought?) the house was full and excited to see this ultra laid back, almost shabby but cooly chic performer.
The charming 30 year old served up a show full of observations, impressions and lies. Dropping his usual PowerPoint for a more experimental and successful routine Horne slowly wound the audience up into a state of hilarity. His honesty about his fibbing is delightful and you never quite now if he’s pulling your leg, his leg or even has any legs.
Without giving too much away about his new show he used a combination of recordings and some ripped bits from some eclectic autobiographies of well known folk, his teasing style and reflective comments giving this show a real edge, but the nice thing about Horne is that he’s so nice, not as ginger as his pictures make out which is probably another of his lies, but funny none the less.
Deep deep down he admits he’s pretty shallow and the quick combination of sophisticated wit, plain silliness and some daft wisdom blended in made this hour fly by. He deconstructs his constructions and used his trademark style of mashing and blending various tech’ to induce surreal daftness and comfortably point out the nature of performance, the truth and what we – as an audience – expect from him as a performer. Whilst there was none of his PowerPoint there was plenty of power and lots of point to this gent and his slyly crafted but apparently chaotic routine.
Check out his website here for up and coming gigs and a peep into his life and mind.
The audience loved him and he seemed to love them too, always good to see someone on stage that gives back the love.
Well worth going out on a rainy night and I giggled about Cherie Blair’s 22 inch letter box all the way home.
You can get a flavour of him with his five-piece jazz band who combine comedy, improvisation, storytelling and music on his BBC radio show here, well worth a listen.
The Brighton comedy festival runs until the end of the month, with a host of new, established and world famous acts gracing the various venues.
Alex Horne played the Brighton Dome Studio on Friday October 11 as part of the Brighton Comedy Festival
To see more about the festival and acts or to book tickets see the festival website here:
Colin Barton from the ME Society, said:
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