Dan Nightingale

Pleasance Dome

Jul 31-Aug 11, 13-25,

5.30pm

£6

Dan is a Lancastrian comic from Preston with a very warm personality and to coin a phrase you can’t help liking him. For this Saturday evening gig the small venue at the Pleasance Dome was sold out with 75 people in the audience. The variety of punters provided Dan the opportunity to go with some good opening impromptu stuff. In the front row was a 14 year old boy with his parents (“my youngest audience member ever”) and at the back a very well behaved hen party! Early in the show Dan was showing some pretty unusual bumper stickers and one of them was I ‘heart’ Badgers. ‘I prefer otters’ Dan commented – “what about beavers?”  came a cry from the audience. Heckling comedy gold (or not depending on your point of view) but for sure a chance to improvise and engage with the audience. A chance that Dan did not make the most of. Then shortly afterwards a different heckler made a disparaging comment about Dan’s baldness. Dan did not want to go down that route either. The heckling was not aggressive or unpleasant. The crowd were in the mood to start their Saturday night out with a bit of a giggle and I thought that Dan could have made more out of the positive atmosphere.

The scripted material was very good and funny. I liked his description of the perils and pitfalls of advertising your wares on internet dating sites. I also liked the recollections of his former love affair with an actress and how going out with a drama queen can cause some interesting episodes. The section on his relationship with his young nephew did not completely work for me – heart-warming but not the sort of thing to provoke belly laughs. At the end of the show Dan complemented the audience for being nice and noted that some things seemed to go well and some things did not work so well. A pretty good self assessment I thought. A nice guy with a pleasant manner and a few funny stories. THREE STARS

Reviewer Chris Donkin