Review: Simon Munnery: Trials and Tribulations

“I’ll just do the show, shall I?” says Simon Munnery, perhaps as much for his own benefit as for ours, before falling down another rabbit hole entirely of his own creation. Minutes later, he’s singing a Clash song. “I don’t always do that, but I love singing songs,” he admits.

That is, in no sense, a point of failure. Indeed, it’s the essence of a Munnery show. Sure, technically he does tick a contractual box and tell us about his two court appearances, a pair of shaggy dog stories, the latter of which is more distinctive for its ‘ghost of Fringes past’ vibe. But it’s a bit of a red herring. An hour for Munnery is more of a bucket to throw ideas, images and scraps of performance art into than it is a coherent comedy performance.

Some of it is winning and original. Specifically, tonight Munnery gives us the beautiful image of him collecting for Amnesty in the police station where he was slammed up. Plus a song which turns on the resilience of supply lines which no one but him could (or would attempt) to pull off. But also, you feel sure that the material on fingering is kept in to be as contrary as possible to those who would tut joylessly at this iconoclast. I’m happy to take the bait and tut here. Sure, you could see it as digging through layers of rock to find nuggets of gold. But that’s a narrow view of the type of comedy that Munnery, almost uniquely, does. Better to recognise the whole as a vast mine, and wonder at the spectacle.