Tom Neenan: It’s Always Infinity
Tom Neenan is distraught; on Thursday 12th July, while at a service station, his girlfriend Hannah Elizabeth Willis vanished from his car while he was inside paying for the petrol, her last communication the cryptic text message “It’s always infinity.”
The police disinterested without some evidence that she has been taken against her will, Neenan feels obliged to conduct his own entirely impartial investigation based on his knowledge that 90% of abductions are by people close to the victim.
Focusing on a very small group of people among whom one particular suspect looms large, Neenan’s obsessive pursuit of the truth will lead him on a quest which will reveal as much of him as of his quarry, stripping him naked in front of his audience who are in for a very strange ride…
A regular and reliable performer of the Edinburgh Fringe, Neenan satirises the kind of man who shouts so loudly that he is an ally in the women’s movement that he actually drowns out what his girlfriend is trying to say, claiming “he completed the Women’s March in the fastest time” before attempting to pass the Bechdel test in a one-man show.
The Andromeda Paradox and Attenborough having been highlights of the crowded month of August, while they, along with his ghostly Vaudeville, have all carried an aspect of genre, science fiction, horror or the devotion to a beloved British icon, despite the science-tinged hint of the title It’s Always Infinity is actually a much more conventional relationship comedy.
While the lack of a hook to hang the show on does leave it somewhat dangling in the wind at times, fortunately even a less than brilliant show from Neenan is still smarter and better constructed than much of what passes for comedy on the Fringe circuit, deftly juggling words and ideas in his game of misdirection instead of simply swearing or insulting people before revealing the unexpected truth behind the mysterious message.
It’s Always Infinity continues until Sunday 26th August
