Mike Wozniak’s The Bench is an ambitious, deliberately twisting piece of comic storytelling that asks its audience to keep pace with an increasingly absurd web of characters, scandals and local lore. Wozniak plays an eccentric narrator investigating the mysterious destruction of a community bench, gradually uncovering a conspiracy involving everything from a fishmonger to international twinning agreements and the Kremlin.
There is clearly a great deal of craft in the construction. Wozniak’s imagination is impressively peculiar, with throwaway details repeatedly spiralling into elaborate tangents. His deadpan delivery creates a pleasing contrast with the increasingly ridiculous situations he describes, while his interaction with the audience occasionally produces some of the show’s sharpest moments. When a heckle lands, Wozniak is particularly quick on his feet.
The problem is that The Bench often asks for considerably more concentration than its comic rewards justify. The narrative becomes increasingly complex, with new names, backstories and absurdities arriving at such a pace that it can be difficult to distinguish the important from the deliberately inconsequential. Rather than building momentum, the accumulation of detail occasionally leaves the central mystery feeling buried beneath its own story.
There are moments of genuine comic brilliance, and Wozniak’s ability to construct such an elaborate fictional world is impressive. Yet for me, the show’s relentless stream of information ultimately becomes more exhausting than entertaining. The Bench is undeniably inventive, but its peculiarities sometimes overwhelm its punchlines, leaving an experience that feels more like an endurance test than a satisfying comic mystery.
Mike Wozniak: The Bench, 22:40 at Main Hall at Assembly Hall at 10:40 pm from August 6-16th
https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/mike-wozniak-the-bench
