Matthew Gallagher’s not short on ideas. Brimming with all sorts of them. Weird ones, cheeky ones, very weird ones. Some of them come out verbally, some are visual, some are impressions, some just flit in the wind as fleeting images. A few of these are fully formed, tiny compressions of concept and execution, with odd angles that come at you like an Asscher cut diamond – take for instance, thirty seconds on having a bee for a friend. All of them are delivered with commitment and energy. There’s never a sense that this fooling around is just fooling around.
But most of these ideas just feel a little bit unformed. One often gets the impression that Gallagher is still holding them up to the light in front of an audience, trying to work out their most brilliant face, scared to put them away in case there’s another angle to be glimpsed. The result is a debut that feels like it’s at Edinburgh a month too soon, notwithstanding the loose theme of the show. To pick an example, somewhere deep in the story about his Catholic schooling there’s a lovely way of describing Jesus shorn of his cross. It’s the high point of the skit. We could get to it, and from it, about twice as fast.
There is, I’m sure, a way of showing a set of rough cut gems, and with Gallagher’s scatty persona, we’d surely warm to them. But he needs to find his metaphorical 16 tonne weight to knock them on the head before they outstay their welcome, and he’ll need a lot more of them for this scattergun approach to work.
Matthew Gallagher: Last Minute, The Stand Comedy Club, until 30 Aug (not 21, 22), 8.50pm