Glenn Moore: Please Sir, Glenn I Have Some Moore

Pleasance Courtyard

Whatever we may have been expecting from Glenn Moore’s new hour, Please Sir, Glenn I Have Some Moore, our expectations are far exceeded by what we bear witness to onstage. It’s certainly a frenetic and intense hour where Moore pushes what is possible from a comedy show to the extreme, to the point where it becomes everything that we may want from a comedy show. 

 

Unpredictable punchlines are the name of the game as Moore guides us along the hour, oscillating between telling the story of a road trip to San Francisco via a desert and these grand tangental spirals that stand in for Moore’s thought processes as he verbalises his own internal monologue. It doesn’t matter how much of an unexpected turn Moore takes with a punchline, he always keeps us on track so that we can easily deduce and make the connections necessary as to why it is funny for ourselves. We enjoy his material just as much when he delves into more self-aware material as when Moore purposefully plays the fool. The jokes themselves are whip-smart and incredibly satisfying to technically dissect, and it’s very clear that this show is some of Moore’s best work.

 

Thematiclaly speaking, this is a show about confidence, mostly the lack of it, and a deconstruction of the social interactions between the haves and have nots. It is best exemplified by the book of twenty jokes that Moore keeps on standby in case the energy dips – which works incredibly effectively – providing a physical example for the kind of second-guessing that Moore believes he is susceptible to. The jokes we hear from this book are basically the  kind of material that form the building blocks of Moore’s show and comedy style; effortlessly funny gems that are built in as a a mechanism so that the less we hear, the better Moore believes that he is doing. Although this contradict the purpose of this mechanism, the jokes from the books are so independently funny, that hearing all twenty wouldn’t seem like such a bad thing.

”a frenetic and intense hour”

Throughout this hour, Moore constantly and deliberately works himself up into a state of frenzy to the point where it is moderately concerning that he may end up having a panic attack. It’s also a little cathartic, evoked through these rapid-fire rhetorical questions that he seems to be asking us as much as himself. Moore’s overall tone can be best times described as sarcastic, although it does occasionally bound over the typical British sarcasm into more acidic territory, giving Moore a  decisive and stronger authoritative presence on the stage despite the self-deprecating critical nature of the content, a dichotomy which yields hilarious results. 

 

It is hardly surprising that the conclusion of this review is that Please Sir, Glenn I Have Some Moore is an absolutely fantastic show. It’s technically brilliant as Moore rattles off a joke with practically every breath he takes. The hour goes by so quickly that we can barely wrap our head around, but then, that’s what happens when you’re laughing yourself hoarse. 

 

By Katerina Partolina Schwartz

Photo Credit: Natasha Pszenicki