Jesterval review: Paul Zerdin, No Strings Attached

Watching a man with his hand inside a foam puppet might be accused of being a decade or two out of date, but it’s still a perfectly honourable guilty pleasure.

Paul Zerdin demonstrates his vocal dexterity through a variety of characters, from a baby to the elderly, cantankerous hard-of-hearing Albert, inciting more than a few giggles from the Jesterval crowd.

Some of the gags may seem a little familiar, either from Zerdin’s own TV appearances or from other ventriloquists, but the show does what it says on the tin.

Indeed, he even name checks Nina Conti, who is also responsible for kick-starting the stalled form.

Unlike Conti, Zerdin doesn’t have any artistic allusions, unashamedly keeping it mainstream rather than an exploration of existentiality.

Interactivity, though, led to the show’s weirdest moments, in which Zerdin had to leave the stage, and the view of the audience, for about a minute in order to prepare the technology for one of the set pieces.

Without, presumably, a roadie who could have done this for him, the pause may have  been necessary, but a minute of empty stage in the middle of a show feels like a year, and I can’t help feeling that something could be engineered to fill the gap.

The gap also encouraged even more people to visit the bar or loo, although this was far less annoying than those who nipped out for a pint when Zerdin was actually performing.

It’s to the Zerdin’s credit that he didn’t let the disruption faze him, and while I have some sympathy for those who need to answer the call of nature, another comic may well have, rightly, taken those carrying in pints to task.

Paul Zerdin pretty much delivers what you’d expect from a mainstream ventriloquist act: not particularly groundbreaking, perhaps, but particularly entertaining.

Date of live review: Friday 13 June 2014 @ Baltic Square, Gateshead Quays