Josh Glanc is a silly billy, a cheeky monkey, even, and his show is for the very silliest among us. With a whimsical glow, he bombards you with his weirdest songs, anecdotes and stunts, somehow managing to pull off such offbeat material with a certain endearing and childish charm. It’s this childishness which makes his show so funny. He goes through faux mood swings and tantrums with his audience, but then slings a hysterical song about falling in love with the policewoman who breathalyses him at them. This kind of endearing buffoonery is what makes Glanc’s show stand out.
His show ends about six times throughout the course of its 55 minutes, and Glanc toys with his crowd from the start, repeating his opening monologues with slight tweaks to hysterical effect. He employs this repetition to huge effect throughout his show, and he selects certain portions to beat into the ground with his tongue firmly in his cheek. Glanc makes listening to the same joke over and over with slight tweaks to absolute pinnacle of comedy… somehow. His ability to take seemingly innocuous concepts to their logical extremes is also seriously impressive; for example, at one point he performs a song about lanyards and contrives an extended gag involving kicking out a crowd member without a lanyard. It’s fantastically bizarre.
He doesn’t do much crowd work in the traditional sense, but his ability to take his audience along with him on his outlandish comedic gallivanting, make them feel part of what he is achieving, is another of the finest qualities of his show. The only issues with his hour come from the fact that it can feel slightly one-note, and his gags and jokes are all along the same lines. But that note is an expressive one, and it makes Josh Glanc’s show a beautifully bizarre delight.
Josh Glanc: Family Man, 15:20, Monkey Barrel, until August 25
