There may have been a plot somewhere deep in Milton Jones’ latest show, but it really didn’t matter.
Milton Jones and the Temple of Daft was really an excuse to take a packed Norwich Theatre Royal audience through a series of absurdist, improbable, and gloriously funny puns.
Appearing initially as his great-uncle Sir Randolph Digby Jones (with a balaclava and moustache as his cunning disguise), Jones launches the show on its surrealist path with conversations between flags and exploding tortoises (“heavy shell fire”).
Support act Nish Kumar provides a brief interlude from the succession of puns before Jones-proper returns to take up the story of a search for hidden treasure, teachers set on world domination (techniques include mixing up commas and full stops to attempt “semi-colonic irrigation”) and a stewardess called Amber.
None of it makes any sense, but it’s not really supposed to. The joy is the wordplay and unlikely juxtapositions. Mostly it works – Henry VIII as a 16th century hoover, or tigers nearing extinction “because we’re eating all the Frosties” – but the barrage of one liners sometime caught the audience off guard (“the UN is just a bit of fun” flew over most heads).
With his trademark messy hair and bright shirts Milton Jones cuts an absurd figure, and this show takes it to another level. At one point he questioned whether being on stage pretending to be a woman made of food meant his life was going well or not; it might not all be hidden treasure, but there is richness here we can all be grateful for.
