Even if this year’s Buskers Festival had been able to include all the usual international acts, Jarred Fell would certainly be right at the top of the list for comedy, magic, slickness, originality and showmanship!

From the moment he races onto the stage from behind tonight’s capacity audience, he has us laughing – and we laugh-out-loud almost non-stop for the next ninety minutes.

Jarred Fell – Again is listed as ‘Comedy, Magic’, and, while it’s certainly a show full of impressively mind-bending magic tricks, the comedy dominates every moment of this hugely engaging routine. This is one of those shows that relies heavily on the use of audience ‘volunteers’ (I’m always careful to arrive early at Buskers Festival performances and to position myself in as inaccessible a seat as possible) and all seven of tonight’s participants – three women and four men – prove ideal contributors. In addition, there are several others in the audience who are used quite brilliantly as thematic reference points throughout the evening.

And that’s the genius of Jarred Fell’s talent. The spontaneity of the moment seems so intuitive and so reliant on selected audience members, that the show must be very different from performance to performance. So much of tonight’s comedy is derived from the physical characteristics of the participants along with their body language and their verbal responses to his questions and comments. At one point, Fell even seems surprised himself and comments that “it’s writing itself!”. He certainly never misses an opportunity, but maybe it’s easier when you have a mind, as Jarred Fell surely does, that’s wired to observe the comedy, irony and paradox in absolutely everything.

I’ve seen comedy acts in the past that invite audience input as the starting point for improvised humour, but I’ve never seen it work so perfectly and effectively as tonight. There is simply nothing that any of the participants can say or do that doesn’t trigger another quick-fire joke or comic response. And, when one of the volunteers gets into the swing of things and tries some wit of his own, Fell’s retort of “I’ll do the jokes” raises the comic temperature even further . . . I guess you had to be there!

The ‘magic’ component contributes effortlessly to the comedy, culminating in a pick-pocket routine that has the hapless victim aghast at the amount of his personal property that Fell manages to appropriate. One item in particular has the audience laughing so uncontrollably that the target, as yet unaware of his loss, seems overcome with confusion. To tell more would spoil it, but who knows what will happen with different participants in the remaining two performances. (I also have to confess that during the night I awake from a dream in which my wallet is missing, and I need to go and check that it is, in fact, still there!)

Jared Fell never talks directly about being gay, but he integrates who he is so completely into his routine that it generates even more genuine comedy. And, unlike so many stand-ups, his use of the ‘F’-word and a broad range of equally colourful language consistently enhances the comedy; somehow, here, along with several other infringements of political correctness, it seems to draw on all our resonances and associations with what’s offensive and what’s not, so that we find our own attitudes/hang-ups/inhibitions called into question, and we laugh at ourselves as much as at the truly masterful entertainer in front of us.

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