Many comedians may agonise over whether to put a particular joke in their show, and quite a few of them may choose to share their doubt over it with their audience. Yet when Mat Ewins does it, you really feel for him – he doesn’t get to riff, he says, because most of what he does is based on months of meticulous video editing to create the right set-up. An Edinburgh Comedy Award nominee last year, his skill is partly presentational, with most of the comedy a result of homemade video clips and live image edits which he produces as he talks.
Don’t expect much sense out of Ewins, who invests the DIY nature of his work with a similarly off-the-cuff high concept; that he wants to start the first newspaper on the planet Mars, and we’re going to help him design each section. We do this as part of an audio/visual show which is ingeniously modern, yet invested with the aesthetic of a kids’ sci-fi show from the 1970s, with Ewins playing the multiple parts of a cardboard box robot who ends up murdered, a helpful green-skinned alien who our host appears to despise (“piss off, Bibbles!” he snaps every time the creature appears) and himself, masturbating in a hall of mirrors.
Even though Ewins himself bears a hapless, tongue-in-cheek disdain for everything he creates (“What is this nonsense? I only had two months to throw together and it’s… oh god,” he scoffs), that’s part of the appeal; the only thing more amusing than a huge, out-there multimedia comedy talent is one who self-deprecatingly gives the impression they’re completely rudderless. When I saw him he had earned that most essential of Fringe accolades, a couple of extra late-night gigs to keep up with demand, which demonstrates how much the show appears to have clicked with his audience.
