Adorning a red silk smoking jacket, blue cravat, pencil moustache and a feather that he theatrically waves about, Milo McCabe’s comedy character Troy Hawke could have stepped straight out of the 1930’s.
Coupling arrested development – his mother didn’t let him leave the house until his thirties – and rapier, worldly wit, Hawke comes across as the naive, silver spooned upper class fool we once believed Boris Johnson to be, only McCabe is better at playing it.
Hawke simply oozes charm and charisma, with an energy that is contagious, and from the moment he steps on stage the crowd are putty in his hand. Interacting masterfully with the audience, Hawke initiates the show by quickly totting up the scrabble score of people’s names in his head, a feat impressive by itself but more so in that it never once wasn’t funny. The audience interaction continues throughout the show, with one particularly vocal audience member trading comedic blows with Hawke, even leaving the silver-tongued rogue speechless at one point.
Scrabble, it transpires, plays a significant part of the show, as Hawke uses the tile scores to present a conspiracy about IKEA having links to a Nazi mind control experiment. Mixing video and audio recording into his set, Hawke attempts to uncover the truth about IKEA via a real-life investigation that goes all the way up to the White House. Obviously it’s nonsense, but the way Hawke is successfully able to find the non-existent links and use the ‘infallible’ truth of the Scrabble scores to solidify his points makes me rather glad he is just a character act, and not a legitimate conspiracy peddler – I fear many people would be convinced by his argument.
‘Tiles of the Unexpected’ is a real masterstroke in character comedy, and I’m so pleased to see that it is already selling out, it absolutely deserves to be. The show itself would be a five star performance, except for an ever so slightly flabby section about midway – unfortunately the reality is that the relationship ruining nature of IKEA has rather been done to death, and although Hawke managed to find an exceptional new spin on the format, it was still familiar territory.
If you can actually manage to get a ticket for Milo McCabe as Troy Hawke in ‘Tiles of the Unexpected!’, you absolutely must. The audience were absolutely beside themselves, and I promise it will be a highlight of your Fringe.
Ca Caw Ca Caw!
0 Comments