Micha Wertheim is Dutch and addresses the question of language before he comes on, in an off-stage Google translation, amusingly picking out language idiosyncrasies. He says that what he is about to perform is what he would normally do in Holland 'only less fluent'.

He enters to Anita Ward's 1970s disco classic Ring My Bell, hands clapping wildly. He's dressed in a smart fitted jacket, blue underpants, socks and the kind of pale blue ashtray loafers last seen in 1970s detective shows; with an infectious lack of embarrassment. And he's got the tall lanky physique to carry it off. He says his disco routine is what he performed to impress his mum as a child. The choice of clothes is because he is in a dream - this is the loose concept for the show. He says it must certainly be a dream, because the venue isn't sold out.

Micha Wertheim was apparently banned from a theatre in the Netherlands in 2008 for offending a wheelchair user who thought his jokes about parasitic handicapped people were directed at him. A lot of the material is near the bone, though delivered in an amiable and matter-of-fact way. Some of it is about the supposed privileges that handicapped people enjoy, such as special Olympics and 'luxurious' public lavatories; and about his reasons for wanting to father a 'mongoloid child'. A man in a wheelchair in the audience laughs along, but it's noticeable that a some of the audience look his way before laughing. Micha Wertheim's conversational and slightly hesitant delivery (which feel deliberate - his English is accented but faultless, and his comic timing sharp) adds to a sense of did-he-or-didn't-he-mean it? Topics include: how is gang-rape a crime in a democracy?; and that Lance Armstrong has ruined it for cancer patients.

Micha Wertheim's observations - on the contradictions inherent in Western liberal society, between the politeness of what people say and the less pleasant thoughts the mind conceals - are dark, witty and dry. It's deliberately constructed, ironic material - and it's funny. His theory of Melvinism is original and strong. He finishes abruptly as his dream comes to an end when the alarm goes off and the house lights go up.

Cast Credits: Performer - Micha Wertheim.

Company Credits: Writer - Micha Wertheim. Director - uncredited. Lighting - Rob Pell-Walpole. Technical Operator - uncredited. Press (BAC) - Andy Field. Producer - Xander Wassenaar. Company - Comedytrain Impresariaat BV.

END

(c) Ruth Morris 2009

reviewed Tuesday 24 February 2009 / Studio 68 Cabaret Theatre, Battersea Arts Centre, London

Fringe Report (c) Fringe Report 2002-2012

www.fringereport.com