Watson’s wit and warmth made it a night to remember
Mark Watson: The Infinite Show
Pleasance Forth
Wednesday night’s performance of The Infinite Show – the latest offering by former
Perrier nominee Mark Watson – was quite unlike anything else I’ve seen in almost 20 years of covering the Fringe.
The show itself is about empathy, and even celebrating other people’s oddness, delivered in Watson’s familiarly neurotic manner. But what made it so special was the one-off presence in the audience of Jess Thom.
Thom has Tourette’s, and has long campaigned for awareness of the condition. Such are her involuntary vocal tics that Watson – a skittish bag of nerves on stage at the best of times – was compelled to do the entire show
with her loudly calling out, say, “Sausage”, “Hedgehog”, and especially “Biscuit” every few seconds. “I’m really glad she’s here,” he remarked early on. “But f--- me, this is difficult!”
Yet he negotiated the situation magnificently. He started to explain, for example, why Wednesday (which has no two-for-one ticket offers) can be tricky
for Fringe performers. As the word “Wednesday” left Watson’s lips, so “Badger” left Thom’s. “Ok then,” he conceded. “Badger night it is.” This is a remarkably tight show, with one strong routine after another. Watson is excellent on a trip to Center Parcs, a dead bee (“Table-tennis”, called out Thom here), and on his irritation with suspicious package notices at stations (“Petrol bomb. Catholic priest”).
He is never better, though, than when engaging with the crowd. The show’s “bookends” see him go through the scribblings of audience members on cards given out beforehand. And on Watson’s mentioning again, that it was Wednesday, a front-row member corrected him: “Badger day!” “Ah yes,” he replied. “I could hardly sleep last night knowing that it was Badger Eve.”
Seldom are impromptu jokes wittier, warmer or more perfectly judged. Until August 27. Tickets: 0131 556 6550; pleasance.co.uk