Review- Adam Buxton in ‘BUG’, Norwich Playhouse

It’s hard to determine the exact moment when Adam Buxton stopped being a cult figure and became a mainstream success.

Perhaps it was when his Saturday morning radio shows with Joe Cornish became essential listening for just about everybody, or when his fan favourite stand up show BUG transferred to TV earlier this year.

Now he’s taken BUG back to Norwich, where it first began, for a further look at the funniest and outright weirdest parts of the internet.

You couldn’t ask for a better guide through this world than Buxton. He’s charming, funny, and utterly lacking in pretension.

It’s rare to see an alternative comedy crowd as relaxed as they are in his presence; there’s no sign of the intellectual armour that has to be employed for more abrasive comedians like Stewart Lee.

When a drunken audience member tries to engage him in a incoherent conversation, Buxton amusingly and rather sweetly deflects the heckler in the same manner primary school teachers use to deal with children’s paintings.

Even when Buxton mines the comments section of Youtube for comedy prospects, there’s never any sense that he’s sneering at the insanity and stupidity he finds there.

There’s no agenda at work, no point to be proven other than that the internet is a very strange place indeed. He seems as baffled as the audience by the vast wealth of deliriously bonkers things he finds there.

Clocking in at just over an hour and a half, the running time is noticeably shorter than most stand up shows, but even this prevents the show from becoming stale and repetitive. There are only a few well chosen off topic excursions, and no pre-planned encore.

If listening to Adam and Joe was always akin to spending an evening in the pub with two witty and intelligent friends, then BUG is like going back to Buxton’s house afterwards to carry on drinking and laugh at the madness of the online world.

When it’s all over, nobody want to be the first to leave but everyone realises that it’s time to go. We can only hope we’ll be invited round every week.