Adam Crow is to many a new name, though he has garnered some success, being voted one of the best comics in the country by Zoo magazine (that illustrious periodical!).
Certainly Mr Crow has a good deal of talent, interacting with the audience with an ease many comics would be envious of. His calm, self-assured delivery has something of the preacher about it, helped along by his seemingly unshakeable positivity. His occasionally self-deprecating bent is endearing and his confessional humour is both brave and unexpectedly funny.
As the title may suggest "Aston Kutcher's Dead Girlfriends" is a show about garnering laughs from the most unexpected of places. Ranging in subject from his own abuse as a child, to bullying at school, his father's Nazi sympathies, drug and alcohol problems and unfaithfulness to partners, Adam Crow calmly takes us on a trip through the darkest corners of his life and brings home some stealthy punchlines with it.
Much of the humour cuts close to the bone, and this is when Crow is at his best, his placid voice juxtaposing a message of love and hope, with brilliantly tasteless jokes with the potential to offend pretty much any group you can think of, but making the audience laugh nonetheless.
His matter of fact manner about his experiences gains the audience's trust and the quality of his jokes is fairly consistant, but unfortunately not all of the show is terribly original. Many of his riffs seem to have been taken straight out of the Bumper Book of Jokes About How Men and Women are Different, which comes across as a little tired, similarly some of his one-liners are quite old jokes one could easily find on the internet.
Overall, a show which promises more than it delivers - on the positive side, some top-notch material mixed in with some very courageous personal stories. However there is some hackneyed, recycled material in there too, which makes what could have been a brilliant show (and it does have brilliant moments) into merely an decent show. It's not bad by a long stretch, but it could do with a lot less filler.
Show Times: Till 29th Aug, 21:15,
Laughing Horse @ City Cafe
Ticket Prices: Free