Rob Copland @ The Old Hairdresser's, Glasgow

Rob Copland’s Gimme (One With Everything) never quite settles into itself tonight. A terse stage entry and an uncomfortable first third see Copland struggle to find his footing with a Glasgow crowd that is, for better or worse, quick to read a room and establish atmosphere. His signature frantic physicality – perhaps designed to inject energy or create a surreal edge – lands instead as tense and uncomfortable when not backed by a bought-in audience.

The show leans on a sentimental throughline that wants to build emotional or narrative weight, but that ambition feels misplaced in a room that hasn’t yet been won over. Earnestness can obviously work in comedy, but here it arrives too expectantly, too abruptly, and without the punchline density or audience goodwill required to carry it to any real zenith. 

Crowdwork, often a chance to rescue energy or create spontaneous gold, fares little better. One particularly wince-inducing interaction with a front-row audience member feels ill-judged – though credit is due to the audience member for sticking it out and gamely participating later, during the show’s climax as part of a performance requiring heroic commitment from all involved as it lasts for about a sixth of the show's runtime. 

Where Copland shines is, unsurprisingly, in the punchlines. Unfortunately, these moments are sometimes undercut by a momentum-killing vocalisation or babbling of stray sounds that evoke the sense of a kind of millenial Lee Evans. The show on display has garnered positive response and a smattering of comedy awards, and Copland informs the audience of this fact on more than one occasion. Yet tonight it all feels a little bogged down, whether under the weight of a rocky takeoff or from the critical weight of high expectations. Overall, it's a shame given how capable Rob Copland evidently is. 

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Rob Copland: Gimme (One With Everything), reviewed as part of Glasgow International Comedy Festival, 22 Mar; touring the UK in May, including Monkey Barrel, Edinburgh, 18 May, 8pm