James Dowdeswell @ The Stand

Article by Lizzie Cass-Maran | 27 Aug 2010

I suppose the title would scan even less well, but it was actually Dowdeswell's great-grandfather who was a clown; working with Charlie Chaplin and music halls in the late 1800s.

During this 40 minute show (significantly shorter than the advertised hour) we are given a history of comedy, from clowns and vaudeville to today's stand-up. He has done an amazing amount of research into the archives and, as a comedy pundit who's also worked in clowning, I'd love to sit and chat with Dowdeswell in detail about everything he found.

However, the show's disappointment mostly lies in the fact that Dowdeswell mostly needs to decide whether he is a lecturer or a comedian. The attempts to make us laugh are thwarted by the fact that the topicĀ is interesting rather than funny, but the lecture lacks some of the depth I'd like to have seen, in its attempts to be a comedy show.

He himself prefaces with a couple of sections with an instruction to lower our expectations. This illustrates the obvious; that he himself is not entirely comfortable with them, resultant in a failure to commit on his part, which never ends well.

I would have liked to have read this show as a newspaper article, but it lacks something in its translation to a performance.

James Dowdeswell on EdFringe.com