The crowd hugged the edges of the club, hesitant to sit in the light looking at the empty stage. Appropriately for a show titled Be My Friend, Mark Trenwith reacted, bringing the audience in one by one like a slow embrace of the bare seats up front. This is a friendly, inventive show which soon picked up the pace as Mark enthusiastically launched into his material, in between introducing filmed segments on the video screen.

On this media night there were technical difficulties, but true to form Mark introduced the audience to Keiran and Ishan working the mixing & lighting desk, and the crowd eagerly applauded the staff when they finally got the entertaining photos and filmed segments up and running.

The promotion for this show says Mark “wasn’t very nice so he attempted to become friendlier”. I hadn’t read this, and felt the story arc could’ve been emphasised more early in the show for lazy folk like me, but the strength of the pre-filmed pranks and social experiments meant I soon caught on. These public pranks are the sort of thing you may have wistfully thought of doing but never had the confidence – at least not sober or in sunlight as Mark does. It is interesting watching his developing comedy style and he has clearly taken influence from Jim Carrey. His physical comedy may be just an excuse to show us how well – and often – he can dance, but his wicked grin and rubbery face made the comparison to Carrey easy.

Without the technical limitations, the audience would have felt more alongside Mark in his journey, but the friendly humour came easily in this fifty minute show, and by the end when the crowd gave him far longer applause than the support staff earlier, he’d earnt it.

Finished reading this article? You might also like:

• Mark Butler – I Have Been Watching You Australians (But Not In A Creepy Way)
• PunCast Episode 18 – Mark Butler
• PunCast Episode 16 – Mark Trenwith