Sam Dodgshon Tries to Hold Your Attention for One Hour – Club Silly

Being a standup comedian already requires a certain level of bravery. In his latest comedy special at Lambeth Fringe, Sam Dodgshon takes this vulnerability to new extremes by giving the audience control over what happens in the show.

The concept is simple but smart. We’re presented with a PowerPoint that resembles a flowchart, with slides prompting the audience to choose between various options that influence the direction of the show. These options range from the straightforward (“Can I speak?”) to the absurd (should he go to hell via purgatory), and each pathway ends the same: we’re asked if we’d like to “play again”.

With the assistance of an on-stage technician who operates the laptop and encourages the audience to shout out our answers, Dodgshon throws his all into the piece. When two different pathways lead to two audience members getting to shoot a nerf gun and water gun at him for the rest of the performance, he takes their shots in his stride and never breaks character.

The show starts out promisingly. Dodgshon sits on a chair reading a newspaper while a recording of him singing The Coral’s ‘In The Morning’ plays on a monotonous loop. The performance doesn’t start until the whole audience unanimously agrees it can, and it commences with us choosing a theme.

As the first few choices play out, we see Dodgshon’s skills of clowning and physical comedy come to life, but the novelty of the choose-your-own-adventure style of the show quickly wears off. Every time a pathway ends and the audience requests to play again, many of the same bits are repeated, and the comedic value drops every time. While each pathway has slightly new elements, too many moments are the same — an imitation of Terry Wogan explaining why Boursin is his favourite type of cheese becomes especially tiresome after a third outing.

There’s a knack for audience interaction on display here, but in the performance I attended, it sadly felt like Dodgshon never quite got everyone on side. While the title indicates his desire to keep the audience engaged for an hour (or at least 45 minutes), the evening’s audience chose to end the show before the 30-minute mark. Perhaps the 6pm Sunday slot was too much of a hard sell for this kind of show, but it was an uncomfortably abrupt end regardless.

Sam Dodgshon certainly shows a commitment to the absurd, but the clever concept of his new show unfortunately never quite fulfils its promise.

Reviewer: Olivia Cox

Reviewed: 28th August 2025

North West End UK Rating: