Comedy legends have come and gone since Emo Philips last appeared in England. This oddball American made his name in the Eighties with his asymmetrical haircut, twisted torso and equally twisted humour. Following last year's Edinburgh Festival success he is on a tour as meandering as his dog-bothering delivery. The fringe is now a grey quiff, the clothes a complementary silver, but the posture and patter are as twisted as ever.
The tone is set immediately. Philips says he has been listening to tapes all afternoon. He doesn't trust the manufacturer's word that they are blank. This high-pitched sci-fi Monsieur Hulot is permanently at odds with modernity. Part innocence, part suspicion: "I don't know
how electricity works. All I know is that it calms me." Philips's speciality is the deceptively simple observational trope about everything from religion to ecology. His contemporary, Steven Wright, employs a similar style, but at the Dominion Theatre two years ago, Wright's relentless quips wore thin. The pace here was much tighter, the hitand-run punchlines punctuated by extended thematic riffs.
If there is a cavil, it is that the eccentricity occasionally threatens to take on a misogynistic edge. Remarks about sexless women would be unsavoury except that it is Philips himself who is usually the butt of the joke. At his best, however, he is the only 46-year-old comedian who can project endearing childlike naïveté. In fact, Philips is so frighteningly good at it, you wonder if he should be allowed out so late.
Emo Philips
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