Oh look it’s that bloke off the telly that does all the Top 100 shows, doing a Top 100 show at the Fringe. Ah but it’s much more subversive than that. Stephen K Amos, who exudes a confidnece on stage that makes audience interaction look as easy as predicting Bullit would be the top car chase in the movies, uses the “Top” format as the basic hook, but once you get into the show, you realise that he’s basically setting up these shows to be hoist by their own petards.

Some of the “Top Things in the World… Ever” Amos glosses over (Number 69 being nothing more than a raised eyebrow and knowing smile), while others are expanded into full on 5 minute vignettes. I suspect that Amos has a full 4 hour show, with something for each entry. On the night, he reads the audience and decides what will work that night, and what will fail. Apart from allowing him to keep himself and the show fresh throughout the four weeks of the Fringe, it also showcases Amos’ best talent - audience interactions (and yes, that is one of his top things ever).

Amos manages to pull four characters out of the audience and intertwine them in his act. All in good nature, but casting them with different voices of his won, and bouncing them off each other. Now maybe the comedy gods will gift you one good volunteer in the audience, but Amos effortlessly worked four out of the 175 strong sell out crowd. They enjoyed it, we enjoyed it and the whole show purred along like a sports car in the outside lane of the M6. Of the stand-ups at the Fringe I’ve seen so far, I’d say Amos was top of the must see list.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 10th, 2005 at 2:19 pm and is filed under Stand Up Reviews 2005. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.