Review: Lunch with a Cyclopath

Dion Owen | Image courtesy of Cornershop PR

Before starting his Edinburgh run, Canadian Dion Owen headed to Edinburgh's Bike Station and built up 46 bikes for fellow performers to get around Edinburgh on. Here's a guy who bikes between gigs. And we're not talking between tube stops in London here. We're talking between states in Canada, and over national borders. I'd be revealing too much if I said he's my kinda guy. But let's at least admit he's interesting.

And yet, much of this interest and uniqueness is lost amid an irregular set that often hints at but never hits on tales of adventure and scrapes on two wheels. There's two cases in point here: a vignette about stumbling across five naked Frenchmen in a remote hot spring just cries out to be a longer shaggy dog story; three separate encounters with police – fun enough even to structure an hour around – are squandered with insufficient care to the build or the beats. There's nuggets of gold throughout this set that remain unmined.

At heart, Owen's stock-in-trade is short, punchy observations, here and there linked with a bit of narrative, with misdirection and bait-and-switch absolute faves. That's fine, but they don't half need polish for them to shine, and that's not the treatment they get here. Still, he's likeable and creates an easy, warm atmosphere in this small room. A couple of improvised songs don't land tonight, but on other nights could provide a nice dose of scrappy chaos if set against a tighter haul of jokes.