It wasn’t entirely clear why Sean Hughes was on stage for much of his two-hour show at the Norwich Playhouse on Thursday.
It’s not that he wasn’t entertaining, likeable, or funny. But there was very little passion.
He drifted fairly formlessly through a mix of anecdotes from his previously more dizzy showbiz life, his relationship with his family, occasional interactions with the audience, poems, and some questionable dancing.
There wasn’t much wrong with any of it, but there was no overriding theme that drove the show on, nothing that built in to a hard laughing, eye-watering, punchline.
There was a smattering of props, but the jokes would have worked just as well without that. There were some odd bursts of music mid-act, but not sustained or strange enough to be surreally funny.
On the whole the material was politely delivered and politely received. I’m just not really sure I want my comedy to be polite.
