Voodoo Rooms
Burt Williamson’s new show, 104kg of Pure Banter, is in one word fine. Is it funny? Yes. Does it make us laugh? Yes. Is it particularly memorable or different? No. It’s a decent set, but it doesn’t quite spark anything in us or leave us feeling anything apart from the fact that it’s a nice show.
Literally, this show is full of banter, maybe not 104kg, but some. By definition, Williamson talks a lot about nothing before finding ways to thread personal reflections through it, although doesn’t quite do enough for us to care and take the personal with the same pinch as every other topic covered in this show. We get red-pilled about corporation’s tax breaks and farmers markets; logical observations that in themselves aren’t particularly groundbreaking and kind of just wrap themselves into the tone of the rest of the set due to Williamson’s vanilla observationism.
“Vanilla observationism”
Williamson takes the scenic route to his punchlines and although this keeps the energy in the room’s atmosphere rather muted. He manages to find it eventually, enough to make us laugh at least. There is such a thing as too wordy and dense, and this set is that. The lead up to each punchline is extremely detailed, providing so much context that we can vividly see the picture that is built up, but not enough to really feel the impact of them. These set-ups do on occasion payoff, but more often than not by the time Williamson reaches it, it’s quite clear that he has over-extended himself and that our interest has in the interim turned to apathy. It’s funny but the effect has dulled. Williamson’s tangents verbally expand to take on a tone of grandeur, but he doesn’t quite have the energy or stage presence to really pull it off and get us to buy into it. To Williamson’s credit, the show doesn’t march to one beat and his comedy is varied in its rhythm and ratio of context to punchline. He’s better suited to the more complacent, measured tone that he adopts towards the end when he chooses to divert towards a more personal end. If the start of the show was low-energy, then the end barely creeps along and it is largely to do with Williamson’s performance as he adopts a posture somewhere between someone speaking in a debate – slow, earnest and measured – and trying to calm a frightened horse (we’re probably the horse in this scenario). It’s just difficult to see what distinguishes 104kg of Pure Banter from any other run of the mill stand-up show by a comedian trying their hand at the Edinburgh fringe. And when we really think of it, we have to admit, there’s not much that does.
This is a comedy set, ceci un spectacle de comédie. A really good example of one, but a comedy set that is pretty much the one you think of when you’re asked to think of one. In the most literal sense, 104kg of Pure Banter this show is not.
By Katerina Partolina Schwartz
Photo Credit: Garry Holden
Pepper & Salt 
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