Review – Charmingly Useless

Neil Sinclair, an affable Brit with a kind face and a happy demeanour, presents in this show his favourite jokes from the past five years. The show is a pleasing journey through Neil’s reflections on life, antics he has gotten up to, hypothetical outcomes to real life scenarios, and a litany of one-liners.

Neil regularly engages the audience in games and feedback; the ‘talent or rubbish’ game, for example, plus an interesting discussion around what are the deal-breakers for various people on the first date.

Neil often adopts the repetition rule; the more times something is repeated the less funny it gets, until it suddenly becomes hilarious. Such a rule relies on faith and commitment, which a couple of the gags didn’t pull off: but most did. He pushes the audience’s capacity for forgiveness on some absolutely awfully punishing one-liners. Forgiveness that he is generally granted.

Neil’s style is more a collection of short form gags than a narratorial journey. He has a charming and also irritating habit of appealing to the audience after each joke for them to appreciate the quality of his gag. All the while his hands do a great deal of the talking, wriggling and writhing as punctuation to his speech.

Neil’s skit involving being investigated while strapped to a lie detector test had many quality gags built in, though could have included a little more continuity in character of the interrogator. Neil tested our mental agility with an inter-referential time traveling gag. His singing capacity and use of the dreaded ukulele left something to be desired.

The show was a fun hour, though could do with a little more structure and a few less one-liners. You could do worse than spend an hour with this endearing and enthusiastic gentleman.