Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

It takes courage to get up on stage and bare your soul at the best of times. It takes the will to be seen as different, to know how to be taken for something novel and distinctive that makes people want to come and watch you perform; everybody has a talent in this world, it is to understand the way in which it is sold that will mark you out as fresh and interesting to watch.

For Adam Rowe, the stand up comedy is a gift, one perhaps worked over with the youthful strains of meticulous endeavour but also one in which he captures the point of self expression and self mocking belief. Many would shy away from the routine which involves pointing out a physical impairment, one that draws attention to the way in which we are perceived and yet, and with great admiration, Adam Rowe takes the audience down a route of being able to grasp their own infirmity, no matter how what it is, and make it in some way work for them.

In the same way a school bully is perplexed and confused by the stream of jokes at his expense, so too does Adam Rowe take on the subject of his lazy eye, the issues of taking a bacon sandwich from his girlfriend’s ex and the strain of family life, the one crutch we all seek out to comprehend, the bully that is life seems to diminish in the hands of the comedian. It is that realisation, that every comedian hurts, that the very best of them do, that makes the pathos of the hour seem more relevant and dynamic.

The finished article never truly exists, it is only in the eye of the beholder who never sees the journey undertaken and only the result that such things present themselves, but in Adam Rowe the journey has been one of toil, of self depreciation and one in which admiration and a good few laughs, hold themselves up with tremendous enjoyment.

A fine performance by one working themselves up the comedy ladder.

Adam Rowe will be performing at this year’s Edinburgh Festival at The Caves.

Ian D. Hall