Milo McCabe carried out as aristocratic matinee idol Troy Hawke for nearly a decade earlier than the character went viral. On-line, the shtick is to pose as an unlikely greeter at excessive road retailers together with WH Smith, Wetherspoon’s and TK Maxx. It’s fundamental Candid Digicam stuff, elevated – if solely somewhat – by the character’s ingenuous good cheer. In his new set, Sigmund Troy’d (a greatest present winner on the Leicester comedy pageant), McCabe screens a number of of those stunts, alongside one or two different pranks-in-public and a few conspiracy theorising about nurses, psychotherapists and Jeff Bezos.
In case you’re coming to the character recent, as I used to be, you could surprise: why is an Errol Flynn wannabe making prank calls to a pizzeria in Welling? The character – silk smoking jacket, cravat, raffish drawl – feels at odds with the fabric. However quickly sufficient I accepted that this isn’t character comedy as social satire, and McCabe isn’t sending anybody or something up. The incongruity is a part of the purpose, as this foppish ingenue puzzles out modernity utilizing Scrabble tiles, numerology and a few crackpot concepts about dopamine and the mind.
The shop-bothering stunts and onscreen interactions with passersby are low-wattage: diverting sufficient for TikTok, maybe, however skinny on the stage. The Hawke persona isn’t particularly constant, veering wherever McCabe desires him to – see the out-of-character rant towards the prime minister. The pleasure of the present comes from Hawke’s heat with the viewers, his puppyish enthusiasm (shading into credulity because the conspiracy theories develop) and from a handful of high-quality jokes. The one about imposter syndrome specifically, coming from a person who's himself masquerading as another person, is a keeper.
At Underbelly Bristo Sq., Edinburgh, till 28 August.
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