Adelaide Fringe. The Balcony Room at The Griffins Hotel. 15 Feb 2019
Grrr! ‘Doesn’t’, not ‘don’t’! Grammar doesn’t matter on a second date! Bad grammar grates we pedants, and that’s the whole point of the show!
Mark Butler is an English lit. graduate – we assume he finished his degree – and he is a sucker for a pretty girl, but if she splits an infinitive or misplaces an apostrophe, then she is dead to him. And this probably accounts for why he is still single in his forties!
In a reasonably brisk fifty minutes, Butler lets us into his love and gives a girl by girl description of how not to win the girl. His obsession with correct grammar is humorous and is the backbone to many an amusing anecdote. A misused apostrophe that signals a plural noun puts a fledgling university romance to the sword. The persistent use of ‘yeah / nah’ and the love of irritatingly bad rap brimming with poor English puts pay to a flattering romance with someone half his age!
Poor Mark! He regales us with stories about one failed romance after another, and it is engaging, and intellectually cute, but the material is not really as strong as it needs to be. If one wants to appeal to the humour of a pedant, then the humour needs to be unrelentingly clever and witty.
This show has its moments, but it doesn’t pack nearly as hard a punch as it promises. That said, the story about his date with a spiritualist is worth the price of the ticket!
Performances most days, finishing on Sunday 24 February.
Kym Clayton
When: 15 to 24 Feb
Where: The Balcony Room at The Griffins Hotel
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
