Holly Williams is relieved to hear some good old fashioned jokes from Dan Antopolski.
At the festival, I've seen comedians that do poems and raps, funny voices and thrown voices, songs and science; comedians that send up stand up conventions; that inhabit a host of weird and wonderful characters. What I've not witnessed is many good old fashioned jokes.
Dan Antopolski – looking lovely in his multicoloured knitted jumper - remedies that. While his set includes a song about a tragically overgrown goldfish and a rap about lazers, he also likes a good gag. He tells us early on we'll have to get over the groaning, after lines like "How do women scare bees? Boo – bees" or a joke involving a telephone shaped like a turd ("that shit is off the hook!"). This, of course, is to be expected: he won Dave's Best Joke of the Fringe award
last year.
He's a very pleasant chap, and an evening in his company seems guaranteed to be enjoyable. Beyond the one-liners, there are extended ramblings on family life and a protracted, sweet flirtation with a slightly older lady in the front row. The material is gently observational, with the odd cutting turn, and it's all punctuated or underlined by his hyper-mobile facial expressions: those eyebrows could probably knit a patchwork jumper to rival his own. There's little danger of complete hysterical collapse, and the material isn't shocking or devastatingly innovative, but Antopolski delivers a thoroughly enjoyable set that delights the crowd.
Dan Antopolski: Turn of the Century is at the Pleasance Dome until 30th August
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