Edinburgh Fringe 2017
Rightly or Wrongly, forBetter or Worse, the Fact is This is Tom Little
Tom Little
Venue: PBH Black Market
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Manchester based comedian Tom Little presents his debut hour-long show filled with non-stop energy and his very particular enthusiasm about his life from age 7 to 30.
Review
Tom Little is particular. Very particular. You discover this from the moment he steps behind the microphone to when he leaves. Who else would nit-pick about technicalities to the point of absolution such as whether peanuts are in fact nuts or seeds and whether his eating them in front of his highly peanut allergic university residence roommate makes him culpable in his death? It doesn’t we are told, because peanuts like Brazil nuts are in fact seeds. And he has at least another ten examples of nuts he rattles off to make sure we are clear that Tom Little is always right.
Who else would take his grandmother to task about whether a Jaffa cake is in fact a biscuit? Him taunting his nan on this trifling detail to the point of her having a generational spat is delivered with such fervour that it is the most delicious moment of his show. To be fair, you want to take his nan’s side, only because all grandparents are divine beings.
Over the hour he weaves a wonderful narrative of seamless setups and clever punchlines (which includes no punchlines at all) and intersperses them with puns and word plays which are a delight. He deals with being a smartass seven year old who spars for three hours with his teacher in a classroom spelling bee, to being a teenager with particular tastes in music including dressing up as his idol at a fancy dress party (which leads to him instantly cutting off the object of his affection when she doesn’t recognise who he is). His journey to turning thirty and his new found interest in exercise (and how he came to about choosing his new swimming coach) is gut-wrenchingly funny.
There’s a menagerie of other things in this jam-packed hour delivered with a confident angst. And ultimately he is true to his word. For better or worse, he is both right and wrong. But you don’t hold it against him because he is unapologetically Tom Little.
Truthfully, an hour with Tom Little almost isn’t enough.
