Subterranean and claustrophobic, Monkey Barrel 2 is the fringe venue where performance can most easily be mistaken for a hostage situation. Joe Kent-Walters isn’t the first to turn that to his advantage, but with this buzzy debut as his alter ego Frankie Monroe (winner of last year’s BBC New Comedy award), he’ll be among the most memorable. There’s nothing uncommon about Monroe on paper: he’s the old-school MC of a Rotherham working men’s club, a vanishing culture of velvet jackets and meat raffles that’s inspired many a spoof before now. But Kent-Walters takes this cadaver of an idea and electrocutes it back to life in a late-night show that both hymns this retro entertainment world, and pitches it halfway to hades.
Echoes are unavoidable of acts gone by as Kent-Walters takes to the stage: gravel-voiced, beery, his face plastered in ghoulish white paint, uttering his seedy catchphrase (“good boy!”) to nervous audience members in a voice as deep as the bowels of hell. On a continuum between The League of Gentlemen and Johnny Vegas way back when, and the Delightful Sausage and Phil Ellis now, this demented vaudevillian steals wallets from the audience, performs naff magic tricks, and barks bananas jingles at us, like the one about “Frankie’s special trowel”. Are any of these moments remarkable individually? They are not: several, like his skill-free ventriloquism routine with cloth sidekick Mucky Little Pup, are very hoary indeed. But cumulatively, and courtesy of our host’s attacking energy, they make a scorching impression.
Or maybe that’s just the infernal flames licking our feet? Kent-Walters’ plot, such as it is, finds time being called on Frankie’s decades-old pact with the devil, who now returns (in the guise of the club’s mysterious committee) to call in its debts. That conceit gives only a little shape to a show that otherwise finds our host sharing centre-stage with his nephew Brandy, performing crap observational standup in monster prosthetics, and a roustabout Johnny Cash impersonator. Kent-Walters does a fine job here exposing this lurid world to eternal damnation, then proposing, with a sentimental final croon, why it might just be worth saving.
• At Monkey Barrel, Edinburgh, until 25 August
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