Shiny is Steve Bugeja’s latest offering to the comedy world at the altar of the Edinburgh Fringe. The show adopts on a linear structure as he takes us on a journey through his school days, comedy career to achieving his dream of writing a sitcom. Through all of this, Bugeja engages in a commentary about the connections that we make between self-worth, career and achievements, critiquing the nightmarescape that we create for ourselves. It’s a relatable hour as we follow him down this path of self-reflection that speaks to a larger sociological and cultural issues and analyses. It gets to a point where we can’t help considering when we’ve had a similar experience, when – to use Bugeja’s terminology – we’ve felt shiny or matte.
Bugeja fires off at a fast rate, but not in a nervous manner, in fact he appears very secure and confident onstage. His tendency to rattle off his material and speak quickly lends itself to the rapid and high rate of jokes per minute, acting playfully bitter at times in a kind of omniscient bystander way. It’s more anecdotal and observationist this time around, he doesn’t particularly build up any kind of gags or images, instead it’s just straight stand-up which suits the academic element that he brings to his material. In every point he makes, he provides supporting evidence in the form of jokes. Each new part of the show follows the argument, evidence, analysis thesis structure which really suits his style of comedy. Bugeja uses his audience interactions to support aspects of his show in an evidentiary manner, to back-up his point and he uses this technique throughout Shiny.
“One for the scrapbook”
One noticeable issue throughout this show is that Bugeja frequently repeats material from his previous tour Self Doubt (I Think), whilst not a huge sin, is noticeable enough for us to clock it. The material works within the rest of Shiny, and there is only one major copy and paste, otherwise it’s just a repetition of an idea. These repetitions do fit with the material of the show, but because it’s quite obvious, it does seem lazy, as if he didn’t have anything else to say about the subject and just hoped we wouldn’t notice.
This is a lovely hour, the low, reflective points are well- balanced and Bugeja manages to keep the energy high in the room throughout. It is inspiring to an extent, the bravery and perseverance that is exhibited throughout this show, not only by Bugeja, but anyone who pursues a dream in the way that he has. Shiny is definitely one for the scrapbook.
Pepper & Salt 
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