Tom Walker @ Underbelly, George Square

Review by Tamara Mathias | 15 Aug 2016

Tom Walker’s Beep Boop stands out amid the highbrow artistry in that it is gratifyingly immature

An Australian clown with a Peter Pan syndrome, Tom Walker has even the most poker-faced of audiences melting into child-like giggles as they're drawn in by his juvenile antics. But his world is not all 'faith, trust and pixie dust'; his impressions morph from suggestive to blatant so seamlessly that parents aren’t quite sure when to stop meeting their kids’ eyes.

Beep Boop is all the right kinds of absurd. Throughout the performance, Walker prances about like a caffeine-addled gymnast. He gets sexy. He shakes a leg. He does his own sound effects and begins tricks with a motley assortment of props that he forgets about halfway through. But no matter, because somewhere along the way he achieves a sophistry so relaxingly transparent, it would put Homer Simpson to shame.

Walker doesn't so much break the fourth wall as demolish it, in that his bits are rather heavily audience-reliant. This technique works well for an easygoing, Pimms-clutching afternoon crowd but less so when up against half–hearted responses. Nonetheless, an endearing routine.


Tom Walker: Beep Boop, Underbelly, George Square (The Wee Coo), 3-29 Aug (not 15), 8.10pm, £6-10.50

http://www.edfringe.com