Gay, dyslexic and with Asperger's, Fringe debutant Robert White is not short of hooks. Nor of talent, both of the musical and the comedic variety. The night I saw it, White's wild, unpredictable set had half the room snorting with mirth, and the other half scowling at his combination of improvised music, twitchy anarchism and juvenile sexual aggression. The first two alerted me to a comic with real promise; the third quality – deployed as if Julian Clary's entire career had passed White by – is increasingly tedious and counterproductive.
I'm not even sure I saw the show White intended. For one musical routine, he solicits the participation of a punter he'd been hitting on throughout the hour. When this "volunteer" unsmilingly refuses to play ball, the skit collapses, and White loses heart. Moments later, though, he's flouncing around in an Incredible Hulk mask, clutching a box of Ferrero Rocher, and one is left to wonder: was the panic faked, and is the chaos planned? It's easy to imagine White engendering havoc on a nightly basis. His faltering, febrile energy (perhaps partly due to the Asperger's) makes him seem vulnerable. His barking switchbacks in tone and volume stop you ever feeling at ease.
A shame, then, about White's fixation with sex and innuendo, as if anuses and cocks were the most outrageous things ever. It distracts from an interesting talent, who deals with heckles in ad-libbed song, and plays comedy jingles on a pyrotechnic trumpet. There's lots of endearing comic business here, around a small core of average-to-good material: sound-portraits of royal family members, a few neat one-liners ("I come from a musical household. I live in A flat"), and a cute song about being single at Christmas. His brand of unstable impro vaudeville could take White far.
