Simon Evans: Leashed

Dependable club comic Simon Evans has had a pretty good stab at getting together a consummate Fringe show over the last few years. Sadly he has not succeeded yet. This is all the more frustrating given that the 48-year-old can conjure routines that endure.

His description of limp, lifeless 1970s Sundays, and his comparing them to 28 Days Later, is one such example of material that tickled a fair portion of his 35-and-upwards audience tonight. Over the course of his hour, the South Coast resident (he is still telling his signature CSI: Hove joke, if any fans were wondering) tries to overlap two themes: the unleashing of himself as an old fogey and the procurement of a family dog.

Still reading from notes (his press night was scheduled later than most) Evans loosely loops these themes (or rather club set modules) around each other, sometimes with a rewarding salvo of jokes (for example in a section about a family holiday to Florida), sometimes filling in a gap with topper jokes that he doesn't need, and that seem tenuous by the standards he has set himself.

Evans has always had something of the sly, or even snide, tutor about him. Now bearded and bespectacled, the comparison to an academic could be said to be underlined. However, if anything his delivery has relaxed. While that is a welcome development, his grasp on structure and placing could, conversely, do with tightening up.