REVIEW: Tom Stade: I Swear - The Lowry Theatre, Salford

Tom Stade is a Canadian comedian currently living in Edinburgh and has performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and on most of the big comedy panel shows on British TV. 

Stade was supported by Jay Handley with a mostly successful set and only a few hiccups. 

Handley’s set relied very heavily on straight edge irony that was very hit and miss. I think this is due to the nature of a support act; a very short set with little opportunity to build the kind of rapport and trust required for that kind of humour. When you’re constantly having to reassure the audience that it’s irony, I think you’ve failed somewhere. In particular, I thought his mansplain joke fell completely short, and unfortunately showed genuine ignorance where he otherwise had a good grasp on these kind of issues. 

After a baffling 25 minute break between the support act and the main show, Tom Stade’s set started rocky; the audience was a largely returning one and he spent a while enjoying that. Though that may be enjoyable in its own way, it meant that the performance took a while to warm up. He made a joke at one point about wanting a larger theatre for this year’s tour but I think his performance suited a smaller venue. His interactions with the audience, callbacks and interplay, contributed to a lot of the more successful humour and I’d worry you would lose that in a larger room. The jokes are competent and slick, and he did an excellent job including jokes about the local area; delivering those like a native can be a difficult task and he did so effortlessly. He has a well-honed set and excellent comedy instincts. It is unfortunate then that some of the jokes feel a little tired. Some focused a little too much on outdated gender stereotypes and while they often went in a surprising direction, they still managed to feel a touch predictable. Overall his set was enjoyable but certainly more amusing than hysterical. It is worth mentioning that most of the audience was leaning much closer to the hysterical end of that spectrum. Many of them were returning fans and they were a very friendly and generous with their laughter. 

Reviewer - Deanna Turnbull
on - 2/2/19