Dave Jory is Polished
As a comedy venue, Hotel Discovery is about as ambient as a fart in a brothel. This is a big backpackers joint at the top end of town full of drunk young tourists and an ear-bleeding selection of ‘hit’s from the eighties and nineties’ blaring out of the jukebox. It’s with this atmosphere that Dave Jory has to contend in delivering his new show “Dave Jory is Polished”.
This show is essentially a stand up show with no thematic core or anything to particularly set it apart from a pedestrian set of stand up you might find on any night of the week in a less interesting comedy room.
There are flashes of originality and potentially interesting avenues which flitter throughout the show but these are largely muted by the repetitive setup – feedline – punchline formula which is unrelenting for the entire hour. Rather than feeling he has to constantly furnish the audience with a grinding string of gags Dave may be better off exploring some of these ideas and developing them into something interesting which doesn’t follow a ‘colour by numbers’ approach to comedy.
I do feel for Dave who is dealing with a difficult room, which not only sounded like it was nestled inside a mini Ibiza but also suffered from a very annoying feedback problem with a loud buzzing sound which persisted for the entire show. Those things aside however, in a festival which includes so many interesting and innovative acts this is simply not good enough. Dave’s is the kind of material which might fly in short bursts in a comedy room but even then, not very well. At this stage he is a long way away from matching up to the kind of quality we’ve come to expect from this festival.
This show runs from Tuesday to Sunday until the 29th April. For booking details go to the MICF website