Bug #15

Buxton hits the Playhouse

These days, the attention span of the western world is miniscule. Our eyes and ears are so easily distracted and we can only focus on something for a matter of seconds.We all listen to music non stop on YouTube, where you almost always get a music video playing for you whether you asked for it or not. In the olden days, a music video was something to be savoured and soaked up; often it was the first time you would get to see what a band even looked like. Movies, Games and Videos and The Chart Show were unmissable. There was that A-Ha video. There was Sledgehammer. There was Reet Petite.

Adam Buxton's return to Norwich Playhouse after a year long hiatus means the audience was pretty full on the first night of a two night run. Adam is pretty much the most likeable Englishman around, with his deliberately showy stage voice, his brilliant sense of comedy timing and his obvious admiration for the eleven music videos that he showed us. Ranging musically from Action Bronson to Arctic Monkeys, with quite a bit of dross in between, the videos were good. But only good. None of them blew me away. None of them shocked me. None of them made me LOL. And sure, there were things made of plasticine, and clever camera tricks, and real life, and real life merged with graphics, and people trying to be cool and clever and hipster, but I was a little bored throughout. And I don't know whether that's because I have so many hundreds of millions of videos accessible to me at any time, anywhere I happen to be, or whether it's because the videos were kind of trying too hard, or whether in this world of Facebook and Instagram and YouTube and Vimeo and Tumblr and Flickr, I've just had about enough of images and people telling me what they think about things.

On the other hand. Buxton intersperses the videos with reading some comments left by the Youtube 'community' . This is bloody hilarious, done with voices, and the place is in hysterics. He also does a little piece about naming common kitchen situations...the one called Foils' Drift, about the rivulets of foil you have to try and unwind from a roll of tin foil if not done properly, gets the biggest response of the night.

And this, I feel, was my problem with the evening. Buxton should do some stand up nights. He's really really bloody funny, as we all know. Then he should do some video nights. SEPARATELY. Because they're great too, but it's confusing when you don't know if the show's meant to be funny or not.

This was a great one though https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKemSP-Ei58