“Welcome to Hell!” With clouds of smoke and ominous music, the audience are thrust into the fiery pits of hell. It is here we find Frankie Monroe, “Yorkshire’s biggest bastard,” the self-proclaimed entertainment officer for our evening in the afterlife. What we experience over the next hour in the company of our energetic host can only be described as comedy genius.
Joe Kent-Walter’s introduced his white-faced alter ego to the Fringe last year, with his debut show Frankie Monroe: Live!!. This year Frankie Monroe makes a spookier return. He embroils the audience in his manic quest to escape hell and save his Rotheram working-men’s club. The Misty Moon, from his gentrifying enemy Vegas Dave, with his £7 pints and pizza in a jar.
This is a show that keeps a firm grasp on your attention from the very first second to the last. Whether judging his game show Wine or Brine?, guessing how many stems of asparagus he can fit into his mouth, or singing along to upbeat songs like ‘Egg in a Bag’, we are on the edges of our seats the whole way through. There are very few performers who could be as successful as Kent-Walters at tormenting their audience. He delicately toes the line between outrageous and hilarious, stealing drinks from audience members and presenting them with a card machine to pay for sweets he threw into the audience.
Kent-Walters has an irresistible talent for turning whacky sketches into comedy gold. The result is a show that feels both messy and extremely put together at the same time, combining exaggerated musical interludes and mischievous crowd work with a gripping central plot. The show ends with as much pizzazz as it began, with Monroe performing a comical strip tease, to prevent Satan from dragging him back down into hell. This is far from a simple comedy show, it is the perfect combination of bizarre humour and over the top acting that will leave you gasping for breath and immediately wishing you could watch another hour.
Joe Kent-Walters is Frankie Monroe: Dead!!! (Good Fun Time) is running until 24th August at CabVol 1 (Cabaret Voltaire) at Monkey Barrel Comedy.
Buy tickets here.
Image courtesy of Avalon, provided to The Student as press material.