By Ron Bingham
Our favourite foul mouthed purple puppet is back. He’s dumped his partner Sammy J and is at the festival with a late night show, reading us excerpts from his new novel, ‘Walking to Skye’.
Well, that was the plan. Randy is a bit nervous about exposing his work to the unflinching gaze of a hostile audience, so we instead get an hour of distractions, musings, stories and philosophy from Randy. There are tales of alcohol and the police, a story about the people you meet when trying to buy a bookcase on Gumtree, unusual deaths, the lives and literary work of Ernest Hemingway and Harper Lee, a little Buddhism and the path to enlightenment and meat versus vegan.
Randy is an excellent visual performer despite his limitations (being anchored to a box doesn’t make use of the entire stage and it’s hard to make eye contact with punters when your eyes aren’t real!). His storytelling skills and joke craft are excellent, but I could feel the audience were a little confused by some of the more philosophical sections of the show (especially the meat industry facts/figures). I do feel that Randy is being a bit sneaky here, as these thoughtful sections of the show will probably have more long term resonance in the minds of the audience than the hilarious comedy routines. At the end, the laughter and rapturous applause showed how much they enjoyed the show.
So if you’re up to a late night hour of stand-up philosophy with filthy jokes or you just want to see a very funny show about books and writing, I can definitely recommend Randy.
Randy Writes A Novel is on at Underbelly Potterrow until August 29
https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on#q=%22Randy%20Writes%20a%20Novel%22