American comedians aren’t used to performing for an hour, Ron Funches tells us: in the States, it takes three comics to fill that time. And sure enough, 20 minutes is probably the optimum slot for Funches, best known as a star of the NBC sitcom Undateable. Over 20 minutes, his lackadaisical pace would be less conspicuous; likewise his lack of anything significant to say. And there’d be less time to get irked by his incessant tittering at his own jokes, which doesn’t get easier to bear just because Funches (“a black man who giggles like an Asian princess”) keeps referring to it.
There’s enough good material to fill a shorter slot, too, including the riff on his recent weight loss, as a fellow party guest tries to police Funches’s brownie consumption; and another about his love of professional wrestling, in which, with heavy sarcasm, he feigns surprise when told the sport is faked. In his best moments, Funches’s wry worldview and fun-loving spirit are infectious, and there are intriguing flashes of steel beneath the surface jollity.
But there’s no dynamism and minimal ambition beyond pootling from one low-wattage funny story to the next. The skit on relationships and their unromantic physical intimacies doesn’t evolve beyond a fart gag. The one about his son refusing to throw out the garbage would barely make the cut on Kids Say the Funniest Things.
The whole thing is just about sustained by Funches’s cheerful personality, but I was laughing a lot less than he was.
• At Soho theatre, London, until 18 June. Box office: 020-7478 0100.
