Josh Glanc: Family Man review – fun and games with an avuncular oddball

Promising a set more memorable than your wedding, Josh Glanc (rhymes with romance) opens his hour performing a ballad about love at first breath test, then wraps things up and leaves the stage. He will re-enter and exit several more times in a show that hymns the pleasure of being so “in the zone” that you lose track of time. You’re certainly never clock-watching as the crop top-clad, bushy-moustached Australian oddball sprays us with a silly string of songs and thumbnail sketches.
The Family Man title may suggest autobiography, but don’t expect too much personal backstory in a show – nominated for the Edinburgh comedy award – that is reluctant to sustain a theme. Glanc’s opening number is reprised with new, equally unlikely meet-cute scenarios (none quite as funny as the first) and he crosses generations with an affecting song about an old man, then swivels his flat cap to become a young one. It momentarily proposes, yet does not deliver, a deeper contrast between the two because Glanc is swiftly on to the next bit.
This erratic flow never destabilises as, say, Jordan Brookes does, but ensures a fun fizziness throughout. Glanc overstates his eccentricities by repeating the suggestion that some of us may long to sneak away from his zany presence. That’s unlikely. Eyes twinkling like the show’s intermittent lounge-bar score, he is blessed today with a game crowd for interactive hijinks including channelling “slutty” energy, opening his post and, most effectively, a hostage situation that will only be resolved by deep familiarity with Domino’s pizza offers. Here, our hitherto avuncular host dials up the delirium.
Elsewhere, he bring fresh perspectives to the funny business, including joking about what talk we might expect from the walls of such a venerable, richly historic fringe venue (est 2017). “Glancing” is his family’s tradition, he says, explaining why he regularly whips out a camera to take our picture. The show amounts to a series of colourful snapshots – mostly focused, occasionally blurry – but you probably wouldn’t want him as your wedding photographer.