Four Stars
Despite the fact that you’re sitting on a hard chair with a bunch of strangers in a high school gym, listening to TJ Dawe talk about his stint as a bartender at Butlin’s Holiday Camp (a dingy British holiday destination) is a lot like bonding with your best buddy.
Dawe is a master story-teller. Engaging and completely captivating, he regales you from the moment the lights go up with a stream-of-consciousness monologue, complete with all the right gestures, actions and lots of funny accents.
This veteran of the Fringe has enormous fun at the expense of the English holiday-maker but, like the best story-tellers, doesn’t shy away from self-deprecating humour. Stories of how he tried to wrap his head around various English idiosyncrasies – kids in bars, the British preference for the word “toilet” instead of washroom, and their apparent ease with the use of the “C-word” leave your face hurting.
Planet S Magazine
August 7, 2003
