Jonny Sweet: Let's Just Have Some Fun (and learn something, for once)

Jonny Sweet: Let's Just Have Some Fun (and learn something, for once)

14 January, 2011
by: Emma

Emma McAlpine reviews the second solo show from Edinburgh Best Newcomer 2009, Jonny Sweet.

"So glad you could make it!" I have never met Jonny Sweet in person but along with everyone else attending his Soho show tonight, am greeted like a long lost friend, enveloped in a bear hug and ushered into the theatre. It's an unorthodox opening for a comedy show but then you'd expect nothing less from Sweet, who won the Edinburgh Best Newcomer Award in 2009 for a PowerPoint presentation about his deceased (fictional) brother Arthur.

His second solo show is in a similar vein, with Sweet again playing a posh and rather fey buffoon, but this time the presentation is on the seemingly humourless subject of the decommissioned naval frigate the HMS Nottingham. Except of course, in the hands of Sweet, whose excellent characterisation and mannerisms could probably make de-scaling a kettle amusing, it becomes a comedy goldmine.

Winking at the audience and punctuating his speech with middle-class idioms like "Sozza" and "Wowsers McGowsers", Sweet can barely contain his excitement about his favourite topic and manages to infuse such gusto into the history of the ship, complete with missile diagrams and photographs of its water tanks, that the presentation becomes more and more farcical as it goes on. This comes to a climax in the second half when a technical mishap forces him to end the lecture prematurely and open the floor to questions.

It’s a bold manoeuvre and one that must work better on some nights than others but it plays to his strengths, because at a point where the subject matter might have run out of steam, he uses his breezy relationship with the audience to inject new life into it. While he probably wasn't expecting one member to pipe up that one of the ship's officers mentioned, a Captain Harwood, was a friend of her father's who abandoned his kids; he deals with the unexpected information admirably. "That's what we call a vintage Harwood move." 

The central focus of the show is not so much the HMS Nottingham but Sweet himself, who manages to be pompous, camp, misogynistic and endearing all at the same time. While the show is occasionally lacking in material, it is compensated by a ridiculous character at the helm who becomes more and more risible as the presentation unravels. The fact that so many of us want to ask him questions towards the end demonstrates just how much interest he creates in the character. Sweet has stated before that he doesn’t consider himself the most versatile of actors, often channeling his own personality into roles, but what does it matter when he’s hit upon such a winning comedy persona?

Jonny Sweet: Let's Just Have Some Fun (and learn something, for once) is at the Soho Theatre until Saturday 22nd January.

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Emma