Jonny Lennard: Tale Blazer

Jonny Lennard finds himself in an awkward predicament when his niece asks for a bedtime story. He wants to rush her off to sleep so he can catch the second half of The Lost World: Jurassic Park, but doesn’t want to fob her off with the outdated morals of nursery rhymes. At a crossroads, he chooses to unpick children’s literature, and for us, delivers a smart, well-drilled hour of deconstructive comedy.

Stepping on stage in blue jumper and jeans, Lennard’s innocuous appearance complements his benign material. His observations are clever but his punchlines lack the clout that will generate real belly-laughs. His is a garrulous, offhand style closer to one-liner comedy than anecdotes, but time after time it falls flat. When unravelling the contradictions in ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’, Lennard rolls his eyes at the lines: “And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand / They danced by the light of the moon.” Of course, neither animal has hands nor has the moon ever emitted its own light. The delivery of this is the nucleus of Lennard’s standup, but it’s dry enough to dehydrate audiences.

Disillusioned with children’s literature, he pens his own. And this is where Lennard is at his best: intelligent, subversive, lyrical. There’s no need for Lennard to go through such painstaking literary send-ups to present us with his own artful material. His stories are perfectly timed, metrical and exquisitely well written. One wishes that Lennard would throw out the smarmy nursery rhyme routine and simply tell us his own stories.