Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh
The TikTok star follows an atom through time, via a dinosaur, Julius Caesar’s lunch and Van Gogh’s ear, in an uncynical show with an excess of scene changes
Injury time is mushrooming in football in response to the realisation that, in any 90-minute match, the ball may be in play for only half of that. That thought sprang to mind as I watched TikTok star Adrian Bliss’s fringe show. It lasts an hour, but Bliss can’t be on stage for more than 30 minutes. The rest is scene changes in blackout, while a voiceover and pulsing red light bridge the gaps. There is lots to recommend Inside Everyone, but as a stab at translating Bliss’s online sketches into the live medium, it must be chalked up as a somewhat qualified success.
The red light represents an atom, whose journey from the outer cosmos to the Earth, then throughout human history, forms the show’s spine. In practice, that means a succession of historical sketches, featuring Bliss as a dinosaur posing for its fossil, as Boudicca scorning Roman wine, and as Van Gogh’s severed ear. There’s a lovely offhandedness and naivety to Bliss’s performance – a naivety that arguably extends to the whole, as Inside Everyone climaxes in hippy-ish wonderment at the interconnectedness of everything. “Do you see,” our host rhapsodies at the soaring finale, “the magnificent unity of it all?”
It’s a matter of taste whether you commend the lack of cynicism or regret the overearnestness. Either way, you’ll find something to enjoy in the 29-year-old’s lucky dip of sketches, most involving dialogue with invisible off-stage interlocutors. Some scenes (the one about Julius Caesar’s lunch, say) feel throwaway, particularly given the laborious changeovers. A skit about Shakespeare’s outsized ruff is fun, even while feeling like a clown routine in search of a more adept clown. His Pandora’s box sketch, with Bliss equally desperate to open the forbidden chest and to preserve his plausible deniability (coyly, to the audience: “I couldn’t ask you a favour, could I?”), is a standout.
His gazillion fans should be satisfied by a show with higher production standards than most fringe comedy – and with a few of his TikTok characters included. As for the rest of us – well, I’d pick Bliss for the next match, but he gets a yellow card for time-wasting.
At Soho theatre, London, 18-30 September.
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