This is a beautifully funny, and, in parts, heart-wrenchingly honest performance. Aidan Strangeman’s songs are intelligently spun into his narrative, with clever lyrics that have brilliant, and often hilarious, backstories.
Strangeman has a fantastic way with words, in song and in speech.
After kicking off with a well-chosen song imploring listeners to turn off their phones, Aiden’s show properly begins. Through the medium of song and story, he chronologically takes the audience from the discovery of his own erection up to his present place as a family man with a wife and two daughters. His eldest is a preteen with a penchant for Taylor Swift. She has excellent music taste and a fantastically funny father.
Strangeman’s growth from a football-loving youth to a responsible husband and father is well-charted in his performance. Discussions of his childhood and misspent youth are very entertaining, but his material based around his wife and daughters forms the most powerful part of the show, emotionally and comedically. Though he could well be the comedy sidekick in his household, from the warm and hilarious way he discusses family life, it is clear that he is a man in love, and a very dedicated and proud father. But not in a cheesy way: this performance entirely manages to strike the right balance between raw truth and comic hilarity. His singing voice isn’t half bad either.
Perhaps one of the most impressive aspects of the comedy is Strangeman’s masterful ability to engage his entire audience in what may well have been, as he happily pointed out, the most ironic audience singalong of all time.
Strangeman has a fantastic way with words, in song and in speech. His performance will have you laughing and crying, often at the same time. He is highly recommendable viewing – especially if you are a West-End or Broadway producer looking for a someone to compose the music for your next show!
