Jimmy Hogg is an awesome performer. For 60 minutes he leaves you pretty much gobsmacked by his energy, his almost constant moving/miming, by the quickness of his tongue and, most definitely, by the wit of the script he has fashioned about finding work, being employed and how both must be avoided at all costs.
This is not an hysterically funny show. However, it is a piece so well-directed (by Peter J. Morey), a story so well-told that you will laugh (and often) but mostly you will listen because you have to. The turns of phrase are so vivid and so complex that you feel like you're listening to a good writer as he creates; a writer with a swift brain, needless to say.
It helps that Hogg is an incredibly affable performer, even when he takes time out of that gem of a script to chide his audience for not getting references to Star Wars or, more obscurely, to Al Pacino's performance in Merchant of Venice. He is no upper-class twit, though. He is in his own little working world (in Great Britain) where a Sainsbury's shop-girl becomes a fantasy figure and a boss is despised for scarfing the Jaffa Cakes while the staff must snack on dusty McVities digestives. (You don't even have to know what those things are to hear the music in the humour.)
I thought I was starting to tire of the solo genre. But this man helped me remember what it could be when done quite, quite well.
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