Ian Smith: Crushing is an excellent show, this will be a short review. Son of East Yorkshire, he has all the gifts needed to make ’em laugh. Excellent delivery, bang-on timing, and a delightfully mental view of the world make him perfect company in a dank Edinburgh dungeon.
Crushing here is short-hand for ‘Crushing Stress’, a topic with which Ian is very familiar. Even his dungeon can go wrong, the rattling air-con unit prone to heckling him right before a punchline. Digging deeper into his life, there’s his circle of middle-class, privately educated friends, and the young woman who continually asks him whether he understands ‘difficult words’. You know, words like ‘accountant’, difficult, challenging lingo to denizens of ‘the north.’
There’s being cast in lucrative work due to meeting unflattering descriptions, and having people call up the BBC to complain about his pronunciations on Radio 4. It’s got to the point where he needs a mouthguard to protect his teeth from all the grinding, and sent him in pursuit of stress relief.
Turns out floatariums are counter-productive, therapy doesn’t work, and as for yoga…which leads him on an adventure to crush cars with a tank, along with…his hairdresser. All of which offers rich pickings for a good comedian, and Ian Smith is a very good comedian indeed. His observations and exaggerations are masterful, his self-dissection glorious. Ian’s rants are superbly lunatic, such as decrying the likely psychopathy of anyone who uses letters to explain how he should say letters.
The mirth he can find in being downgraded at a hotel due to his booked room having been sullied by the previous guest is both absurd and wonderful. Just as with other significant bits of schtick, Ian’s call backs are clever, and deployed with practiced ease. His crowdwork is genial, funny, and unthreatening. Sure, this is labelled as an 18+ show, but there’s nothing to scare the horses here.
So if it’s excellent, pure Stand-Up performed by a comedian at the top of their game, and you don’t feel the need to explain ‘difficult’ words to Yorkshiremen, this is the show for you.
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