Returning to Edinburgh for the second time, Luke Stephen brings with him all the emotional baggage you would expect a self-destructive, early 30’s Essex bloke to have. Unlike a lot of comics who take the lads-eye-view of sex, relationships, and immaturity, Stephen’s wit and gregariousness enables him to come at these topics in a way that is far from hackneyed, managing to get the audience onside even when describing some of his more questionable antics.
Commit no Nuisance is slick, well-crafted, and very funny.
If he is anything, Stephen is a good host, helping one woman carry her pram down flights of stairs so that her infant daughter can attend her first stand-up gig. The child could do a lot worse, though it is probably for the best that she can’t yet understand what is being said, with Stephen launching into a series of routines on the subjects of accidentally drunkenness, failing at bedroom dirty talk, and introducing his young nephew to the ‘c’ word.
The show is very tight, with a level of professionalism and technique that is not the first thing you normally associate with the Free Fringe. Stephen does pack a lot of material into the sixty-minute set, some of which he could consider paring down. It’s not that it’s bad stuff, it just means that he has to go at 100 miles per hour from the get-go when some of the material could be better served by being allowed to breath a bit more.
Stephen is the kind of comic who would not look out of place on something like Live at the Apollo – though at times it gets a tiny bit repetitive as the show draws to an end, Commit no Nuisance is slick, well-crafted, and very funny.
