Review: Luca Cupani – God Digger

Have you heard the one about the Catholic Italian? Extravagant arm gestures? Check. Lived at home into his thirties? Check. Had an overbearing mama? Check. Deliciously mellifluous accent? It's all there. Nope, not a lazy stereotype but a real man performing in the Underbelly Wee Coo.

Genuinely, Luca Cupani isn't a cartoonish trope, but an original comic voice. God Digger finds him giving a lesson to us heathens about Catholicism – about its oddities and contraditions, of which there are a couple. He lectures, though, from the perspective of a follower of the faith – a man firmly in the guilty camp. His sin is delightfully original, dancing nervously, apologetically around the lives of the saints. A running gag about the ambiguity of God's signs, and the foibles his interpretation of them reveals has the joint accolade of being both funny and theologically sound. The linguistic contortions he makes to avoid swearing are all the funnier coming as they do in a second language. Imagine the shame of your mother walking in when you are "interacting with your body in a sinful way".

There are occasions where the 2015 So You Think You're Funny competition winner shows a hint of inexperience. A couple of times he loses his structure and has to backtrack to relay important facts. And God Digger doesn't so much conclude as stop happening. And there's an odd merchandise section which feels, erm, well-worn. It'll be interesting to see what Cupani does next with his very specific back story. Maybe Catholicism provides an endlessly rich seam for comedy. If it does, Cupani is definitely the right person to mine it.