It’s been quite the year for Viggo Venn. Twelve months ago, he tells us, he was playing in a pub across the street to a crowd of 14 people. Tonight, he’s filled a West End theatre with fans who love him for Britain’s Got Talent, on which the Norwegian clown gambolled to victory in a fluorescent vest. If you liked his One More Time routine on telly, you’ll be in clover tonight: Venn flogs it for most of the first act (and plenty of the second). It starts to look as if our shock-haired host isn’t here with a comedy set, but for a laying on of hands, as he criss-crosses the auditorium ministering to his hi-vis devotees.
With technical crew forever scurrying across the stage and Venn among the crowd, it’s chaotic – but, by the interval, barely a show. I began to wonder whether Venn’s goofball shtick only works if it’s got a structure and authority, of the kind Britain’s Got Talent provides, to push against. Certainly, all his business with hi-vis vests feels thin here, in a first half padded with guest clown acts Ella Golt and Steffen Hånes.
