1000 Tiny Birds

Daniel Sloss - Can't

London Palladium, 2023-02-18

Weirdly, two shows in one day (this follows Lemons x5) both illicit the same slightly disappointed reaction - good, but should have been better - from me, which does make me wonder about what I was bringing to the table that day. In the second instance, we see Daniel Sloss. I was meant to see a work in progress gig for this tour in Edinburgh, but a terrible bout of food poisoning put an end to that notion. Instead, I am here seeing the finished thing, and I wonder how different the two really are. I’m a big fan of Sloss, for his conceptually tight shows such as Dark and Jigsaw, and yet Can’t feels like it never quite coheres the same way. He has two halves of two different shows - one about cancel culture, one about becoming a father - and it’s too easy to see the stitches where he’s realised that neither of them are the whole show, where you’d hope to see delicately sewn thread. It feels churlish to complain, given that the material itself is excellent. But to criticise new parent comedians who talk about it as playing on easy mode, Sloss does somewhat open himself up to it. Kai Humphries supports, amiably enough.