Presented by Feast Festival Toby Halligan
Reviewed 29th October 2016
Halligan’s show Toby or Not Toby is his latest outing of topical and political comedy that is full of enthusiastic energy for his chosen topics. He presented his show in a one night only performance at Raj House as part of Feast Festival.
The show used the US presidential election as a basic frame for the rest of his set with an assortment of anecdotes introduced for the body of the performance. His stories ranged from his international travels, to recent sport and celebrity events, were all thrown in the mix to create a broad range of jokes to cater for most tastes. The heavy use of LGBTI themes within the show went over well with the Feast crowd and seemed to allow for greater pace to his punchlines.
Halligan is an engaging and entertaining performer who showed through his work an apparent passion for solidly researched and backgrounded comedy. Throughout his show he displayed strong banter skills well in his approach to mingling with the crowd and embraces a level of self-satire that allows him to appear very relaxed on stage and open to heckles.
The set ends with a song about horrible comments people have written on social media. It is a deliberately bad musical number but plays nicely into Halligan’s self-critiquing comedy and adds to the mocking of the source material for the lyrics.
Halligan’s overall performance has evolved into a hilarious show that hits the mark for many different senses of humour. The inclusion of the occasional prop worked effectively to emphasise the style of comedy Halligan implemented for Toby or Not Toby.
Reviewed by Alex Dunkin
Twitter: @AlexDunkin
Rating (4 out of 5):
One Night Only: Season ended
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