Review: Tony Law, Go Mr Tony Go, The Basement, City Screen, York (From York Press)

Review: Tony Law, Go Mr Tony Go, The Basement, City Screen, York

11:36am Tuesday 3rd April 2012 in Comedy By Jonathan Wilkes

What better way to spend April 1 than in the company of the absurd, ebullient and brilliant fool that is Tony Law?

Law is, quite simply, one of today’s best comedians. Go Mr Tony Go is a joyous hour of ramshackle nonsense. He did, after all, indulge in four introductions and claimed to have saved a ship full of polar explorers with his time-travelling sausage dog.

Law may be blithe, but he is a master deconstructionist. His expertly critical commentary meant his flexuous comedy did not lose momentum for a moment. The Basement echoed with raucous laughter throughout, with the type of laughter that leaves audiences with aching jaws and headaches; where you almost have to ask the stand-up to stop for health and safety reasons.

Insisting he is “dangerous” and a “maverick” – because he takes the lids off his coffee cups – Law bounced from his attempts at satire (followed by an enthusiastic POW!) to dabbling in casual xenophobia in his bid to be “more mainstream”.

When immersed in the surreal pools of his brain, he transcends to the sublime: the panda bear prostitution problem is so serious he told it in torchlight and his buoyant concluding joke saw two elephants talking in a bar. It built and built until there were six elephants each with a fantastically unique accent. It was chaotic, without a punch line and extremely funny.

The “19th-century Arctic explorer” Tony Law is a confident, capricious, cartoonish virtuoso. Wherever he is going, we should all be going with him.