The Stage 30.08.03
Born to a couple of Peter Pan fans,
Mike Gunn reached his teens to discover sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. Now he’s
got a stand-up show about it. If you think ‘fun’, he’ll quickly and politely
reassure you it’s anything but.
In the hour that follows he reveals all about the horrors of his heroin
addiction, throw-ing in a kid’s joke every time it gets scary and making sure
that every potentially infectious anecdote has a warning sign of
self-humiliation attached to it.
His manner in general is remarkably humble, his earnestness perfectly amiable
and sympathy is the last thing he would ever ask for. Instead, he gently
encourages you to laugh along to his surreal accounts of making a fool of
himself. While it is neither Trainspotting nor Howard Marks, this show has to
be the anti-drugs campaign’s best comedy act, courtesy of the comedy circuit’s
most vivid raconteur. Yet there is a catch in his narrative too. He’s been
clean for 16 years and while he may look like a dressed up bouncer, the flighty
boy inside is forever refusing to grow up.
Duska Radosavljevic