Review – Pat Burtscher’s Overwhelmed

There’s a theme Pat Burtscher touches on during the latter part of his confused ‘show’ and that theme is professionalism. While the scatter-brained, tangential style of stand-up is common, and deftly performed by the likes of Arj Barker or Ross Noble, I’ve yet to see a show as seemingly unplanned, unfocused and, unfortunately, unfunny as Overwhelmed.

While there were a few chuckles here and there, they were mostly the product of awkwardness rather than clever observations on the world. And the awkward kept coming with Pat falling flat with audience banter, recounting stories of kicking audience members out of his shows, and finding an uneven rhythm in moving from point to point. Looking around, I couldn’t help noticing many ‘not amused’ faces littering the audience as Pat tried in vain to remember where he was going next, staggering through the occasionally amusing observation only to wring it dry as he tried to milk every laugh out of it as he could, to disappointing effect. Too often were we presented with “well, not everything is going to work,” or, “you won’t find everything funny”. Literally.

Back to professionalism, and while a seasoned comic might play off a chaotic and random motif, above it all you can still feel the planning and methodology behind the madness, leading to a well rounded performance. Pat Burtscher’s Overwhelmed is missing this. Had some time been spent even just mapping out a rough idea of where the show was going it may have been far more effective.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to recommend this show to anyone, as walking out I couldn’t help but feel like I hadn’t even seen a stand-up comedian, but rather a joke.

Underwhelmed.

Pat Burtscher’s Overwhelmed is playing at The Tuxedo Cat every night at 9:45pm, 8:45pm Sundays.