Spencer Jones’s new show is set in his house. He stumbles in late, flicks on the light – and finds an audience sat there among the half-made props and Things We Leave Behind. That’s his title – because Jones has been on a mission to salvage other people’s detritus and turn it into comedy: this is an hour of the props tomfoolery we expect from Jones. With the twist that, this year, there’s no pretence it’s a polished production, just a doofus noodling in his basement with broken hoovers, painted spoons and a loop station.
“These aren’t ready yet to put in a show,” he jokes – which is both funny and a cute get-out. Not that he needs one: The Things We Leave Behind acknowledges that Jones’ noodling is the point, that honing it into a show just gilds the lily. The multilayered ditties he generates on his loop station (one sampling his son’s moaning; one abstracting into nonsense the phrase: “Do you remember my mum?”) don’t develop into full-blown numbers: they stop the instant the magpie-like Jones wants to move on. A vacuum-cleaner puppet, a singing megaphone, and (best of all) a ventriloquist’s dummy wearing a creepy Mekon mask – he shares the visual gag, we all laugh together, then it’s on to the next thing.
The domestic setting gives him something fruitful to play off. The incongruous comedy of his closing set-piece is intensified when his narked wife catches him at it. Elsewhere, quiet is enforced, because his kids are sleeping in the room above. Jones has discreetly sidelined his even dorkier alter ego The Herbert in recent years, and here he’s more “himself” than ever, riffing on his children, his memories of his dad and his finances.
This is less standup than chat, amusing and otherwise – which is fine, because Jones’ shows can’t be measured against anyone else’s standards. They’re about celebrating the fact that a grown man can get away with this, and they show – this one as luminously as its predecessors – how imagination and play can render the humdrum delightful.
At Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, until 25 August.
