Sam Simmons

 

That’s partially down to the fact that being Sam Simmons is clearly not a comfortable experience. He’s spent years trying to create an original form of live comedy, far removed from typical guy-with-a-mic stand up (although he’s also disdainful of comedy-as-theatre, going by several of his more withering asides during the show), and the fact that he still divides and confuses audiences seems to both genuinely delight and genuinely annoy him.

 

It’s a fascinating dynamic. Many times during The Precise History of Things he'll step out of a piece to assure the crowd that he’ll win them back, then during a piece of comparatively accessible comedy – his Xmas-songs-as-Star-Wars-music mash up, for example – he’ll berate the audience for laughing too easily.

 

It keeps the room on-guard the whole time, which gives the show a very unusual atmosphere. Is Simmons’ meltdown on stage part of the show, or is he really that disappointed in us? Is he asking too much of an audience to follow his breakneck pace from one comedic conceit to another? And why is that puppet llama lip-synching to ‘Freestyler’ by the Bomfunk MCs?

 

That said, …Things is inarguably best show to date, freed of the need to follow some sort of vague narrative (as with Fail, for example). While the show does have a point to it, we get there via a machine-gun mix of bursts of song, voiceover vignettes, monologues, a mini-opera set in a Coles, visual aids, shonky props, a synthpop number about pinecones and a recurring trope with an Old El Paso Taco Kit. While there’s not a lot of audience work involved, there’s enough to keep the front rows nervous, and there’s a genuine fury in Simmons that means that those moments of charming absurdity (the songlet “this is how my knee works” springs to mind) are underpinned by the uncertainty of what is coming next.

 

While much of humour is based in absurdity and wordplay, there’s none of the cheeky chappy palliness of, say, Ross Noble; and that’s probably going to prevent Simmons ever playing arenas. It’s also why he’s so important. Simmons is unlikely to ever be satisfied with himself or his audience, and while that’ll probably make for a frustrating life and career, it also makes for some genuinely extraordinary comedy.