Drew Michael’s first televised set was called “the most polarising comedy special of the year” and its follow-up likewise divided audiences. The impression of less of a crowd-pleaser than a crowd-provoker is confirmed by his fringe debut, an inventive and intimate set that Michael interrupts with staged phone-calls from the audience, protesting against the show’s self-indulgence and lack of easy hooks. I wouldn’t go that far, but the 37-year-old is stronger on structure and invention than on jokes, which absent themselves entirely as the show narrows to its heartfelt conclusion.
It is not clear that’s where we are heading when the sometime Saturday Night Live writer kicks off, with an act-out fretting about whether last night’s date will respond to his texts. It establishes him as an intense overthinker, his vulnerabilities uncomfortably close to the surface. We then flash back to a slanging match between Michael’s parents, who then break out of their frame and begin commentating on his show. These same parents are implicated in Michael’s failure to address his hearing loss as a child, which has since severely deteriorated, as an upstage graph dolefully depicts.
An already intriguing gig gets more interesting here, as Michael invites us to don headphones, and begin experiencing life – and poor hearing – as he does. Imagining ourselves on that first date from earlier, we watch a hack standup perform while Michael’s inner monologue hotlines into our ears. As when Jordan Brookes deployed a similar device a few years back, we hear antisocial thoughts and random earworms in lieu of sounds from the external world. But Michael’s headphone experiment instructs as well as destabilises. It tells us, in his doctor’s words, that Michael “must be working extremely hard” to get from one social encounter to the next.
And so the tricksiness falls away, as Michael speaks starkly about his journey towards accepting his condition. I don’t doubt how meaningful this is to the performer, and maybe to many audiences – even if the swerve from innovation to conventional heart-on-sleeve finale is disappointing. Part spiky comedy experiment, part deadly serious deafness confessional, Drew’s Adventures disconcerts as much as it amuses – which may be just how Michael likes it.
• At Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh, until 27 August
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