Glasgow & Edinburgh Comedy Event Review
Dwight Slade| Sneering, swaggering delights in this electric performanceThis Glasgow & Edinburgh Review took place during a week long performance from Thursday August 21st to Thursday September 4th 2003 - He may have been Bill Hicks’ childhood friend but Dwight Slade is a bitter, unhinged and brilliant comic in his own right. And he possesses the finest hairdo this side of a German Michael Bolton convention. What Vidal Sassoon would give for five minutes alone with this coiffeur...
Anyway, Slade’s locks are surprisingly glossy considering the 29 hours spent in airports getting Edinburgh. Take a bow, the North American blackouts.But while the power cut cost their economy billions, it almost cost Edinburgh one of America’s finest award-winning comedians.
So, Slade is a pissed off man with several chips, sorry, fires, on his shoulder. And they are certainly not of the freedom variety. He rails against the culture of conformity that pervades the US, and with a heartfelt cry of ‘Think for yourself’ and a face that amplifies expressions to absurd levels, he turns his bile on Microsoft, coffee culture and Britney Spears.
Glasgow & Edinburgh Comedy Event Review - Quote
"Slade’s ironic barbs, which got him fired from a plethora of mind-numbing menial jobs, are a sneering, swaggering delight that firmly put the nail in the coffin labeled, ‘Americans don’t get sarcasm’."
Slade has a few bees in his well-coffed barnet
Slade’s ironic barbs, which got him fired from a plethora of mind-numbing menial jobs, are a sneering, swaggering delight that firmly put the nail in the coffin labeled, ‘Americans don’t get sarcasm’. This is so sarcastic it could curdle milk.
While we share that cruel humorous trait, some cultural references do not make it all the way across the Atlantic. Britons do not eat at Olive Garden, watch Joe Millionaire, wear Eddie Bauer, shop at Wal-Mart or drive minivans, but a sizeable chunk of Slade’s routine assumes we do. You almost wish we did, even though he condemns all of the above, just to get the obviously great joke. When such discrepancies slow the pace, Slade just reanimates the show with some good old-fashioned slapstick. Never was so much pleasure derived from something so simple as a grown man screaming so hard his lungs might put in an appearance as he tries to rid his barnet of an imaginary bee. Slade performs these high –degree histrionics like a rubber-faced Duracell bunny.
New York should have plugged its grid into this dynamo and tapped into one of the most entertainingly animated performers at the festival.