Alfie Brown – Imagination

A better title for Alfie Brown’s stand-up comedy download Imagination would be Alfie Brown vs the Zombie Audience.

I have never, ever seen a good comic face such a passive and dead audience. The audience is so dead it is an insult to the stand-up. Still, he plows on, managing to get his solid material across to people who do not deserve it.

The first third of Alfie Brown Imagination is relationship material. This includes raising gender neutral children (which sets up a callback), the “go for it” approach to having children, fatherhood and children’s questions. The best moment when he presents parenthood as if it were applying for a job.

The only time the stand-up comedian gets a genuine laugh in his set is when he totally oversells his bit on Belle’s Song in Beauty and the Beast. It is as if he shocked his audience awake. The effect unfortunately does not last and the zombies stay comatose.

This is followed by a rather smart, and too smart for the dead room, bit on Dubai vs. L.A.

The bit on the humor of poo, something you think would get an audience on board, falls flat. Again, not Alfie Brown’s fault.

I wish the stand-up comic had done more on taking his kids to Comicon as it is a promising premise unexplored. Less interesting for this North American viewer is the story of his trip to see the Liverpool Football Club although the link between political protests and football fandom is interesting. BTW a scouse is someone from Liverpool.

Alfie Brown ends with a clarification of the point he was making with Comicon, protests, and Liverpool FC. That is probably because he hasn’t quite made it.

To his credit, Alfie Brown nails the crowd at the end for it total apathy though most don’t get it.

Imagination
Alfie Brown
Streaming video
800 Pound Gorilla Pictures 2021
60 minutes

Related Posts