Mike Wozniak: Take the Hit at the Soho

“I’ll start the show in a minute” was one of Mike Wozniak’s running gags throughout his sold out show at Soho’s famous comedy theatre.  Sadly the show didn’t seem to start.  Bumbling and often hard to understand, Wozniak produced a below par stand up performance that received few laughs.

Bounding on stage dressed up like he had just come from a cocktail party, his oversized bow tie complete with an over sized moustache was a tad cliché but still an eccentric look and a look you’d certainly expect from comic.  However, his attire was the only funny part about the hour-long show.

The words “showbiz” and “mother-in-law” came up more times than the audience cared to remember as the obligatory giggles came and went as these running gags grew tiresome.  An awkward man on stage, and it being hard to define whether this was part of the on stage persona, Wozniak struggled to engage the audience as the posh funny man routine was nothing they hadn’t seen before. Ill timed jokes about recent floods and dogs mauling children were bad mannered and unnecessary. There was no flow as topics and stories had no clear beginning or end and the show as a whole  was hard to follow and repetitive.  Holding an audience in the palm of your hand is a skill to be admired and one that many comedians seem to do so effortlessly but not in Wozniak’s case. This skill appeared in flashes but not often enough to hold the public’s attention throughout.  The majority of his gig was clever and cleverly written just poorly executed.

For someone who has been on the comedy circuit for a while, this was a disappointing offering.  With all the tools needed by a comedian firmly in his arsenal it’s a great shame that this comic isn’t working to his full potential.

Alice Barker

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Watch Mike Wozniack Live in Edinburgh here: