Ventriloquist Paul Zerdin was a modestly successful UK variety act for years, until he tried his luck on America’s Got Talent last year, and won. Now he’s got a three-year contract with Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas, starting next week, and these London gigs are almost all that remains of a mostly cancelled British tour. The show is a compendium of Zerdin’s favourite bits, in which he flaunts a pretty impressive voice-throwing talent – which isn’t to be sniffed at, but I missed the playful deconstruction of the form in which Nina Conti, among others, trades. And the jokes are basic.
Zerdin bookends the show in the company of freckled schoolboy dummy Sam. He is not a particularly expressive puppet, but he is the star of tonight’s most eye-catching sequences: he and Zerdin swapping voices, before Zerdin loses his altogether; and Sam’s warts-and-all tale of what went down with Bungle, Sooty, Sweep et al at the annual puppet party. Zerdin can’t resist a smutty joke, and in most of them the smut is more conspicuous than the wit. Another puppet, Albert, mainlines the supposed humour of an incontinent old man with a libido; a third is a baby who pisses over the front row.
The same goes for the “human puppet” interlude, when Zerdin fixes mobile masks to two audience members and ventriloquises them. The device is used mainly for low-level humiliation, as one punter is obliged to wiggle his backside and both are briefly invited to remove their clothes.
There’s no gainsaying Zerdin’s vocal skill. He’s a virtuoso, able not only to throw his voice but mimic the famous, beatbox and – as recounted in a droll, dummy-free sequence – pose as the automated voice of an elevator, while nary a flicker disturbs his lips. But it’s a skill behind which lags material that’s middling quality at best.
•Until 16 April. Buy tickets from theguardianboxoffice.com.
