Michael McIntyre’s Big World Tour is a laugh-a-minute
It’s difficult being the warm-up act. It’s even worse if you are the understudy to Michael McIntyre.
The audience were fidgety in their seats waiting for Andrew Bird’s 20-minute performance to end. His worn-out anecdotes and all too familiar sketches about poor parenting and Grand Designs were lacklustre.
Almost immediately after his exit, the room awoke with the arrival of McIntyre, whose energy has been compared to an ‘Energiser battery’. He is the embodiment of vibrancy and life.
Running across the stage with his infamous hair bouncing wildly, he launched into his performance, mimicking those in the “smug seats” at the front and waving melodramatically to the furthest rows of the 20,000 seat arena.
The anecdotal style of McIntyre’s work is most affecting with his audience. Relatable stories of parenthood resonated with the largely middle-aged audience; the trials of getting coats on in the morning and their affliction for swearing disobediently (“as a parent, it was terrible. As a person, it was absolutely hilarious”) evoked hearty laughs from an audience who knew these struggles all too well.
Self-deprecation is laced throughout the performance; mocking his new weight gain (referring to his holiday self as ‘sunburnt and fat’), having to wear a very flattering orthopaedic lumbar for lower back pain, and referencing to being robbed earlier this year.
The success of the show could be felt by the continuous laughter for the entire 85-minute performance; the only disappointment being that the show wasn’t longer.
