Joe Stilgoe: One Hour!

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“This is choose-your-own entertainment,” Joe Stilgoe tells a small-ish crowd from a small-ish stage in the catacombs underneath Cowgate, as the singer solicits audience suggestions for one of his piano-led jazz medleys. He cuts a dapper figure in a three-piece suit, with a smooth schtick heavy on sardonic wit, and at the audience's urging launches into a spirited mashup of The Beatles, Scott Joplin and George Gershwin. A skilled pianist, Stilgoe comes across as an eminently likeable gent, but One Hour! generally fails to hold the viewer's interest.

Part of the problem is a fundamentally flimsy premise: the uneven mix of balladry and banter plods along nicely enough, but it's a meandering experience without much by way of pace or direction. When left to his own devices away from the piano, the show quickly starts to lose its rhythm. Stilgoe can be both funny and engaging, but he's not a comic, and the anecdote-heavy conversational sections tend to feel aimless.

Stilgoe is undoubtedly at his most arresting when he sings; a decent voice fitting neatly in the inoffensive pop-jazz milieu he has chosen. The finale—a particularly creative medley of Beethoven's 5^th, Take That's 'Greatest Day' and the theme-tune to The Littlest Hobo—is an obvious highlight, but it's also a frustrating nod to Stilgoe's obvious potential. One Hour! is a fun diversion, but it just feels like it could have been so much more.