Love, Factually

‘I can see some of you thinking, “Wait, I’m learning things! I thought this was comedy”,’ Tom Lang comments halfway through Love, Factually. His first one-man show is a hugely entertaining and eye-opening journey through the bizarre sexual behaviours and physiology of various animal species, including our own. Lang is a high school science teacher, which might account for his remarkably relaxed demeanour on opening night; after a classroom of teenagers, a Fringe Festival audience must be positively soothing.

Fresh-faced, likeable Lang has an obvious passion for his subject and a delightfully silly sense of humour. The show is studded with pop-culture references, groan-worthy puns, fascinating nature factoids and some deeper philosophical ideas about nature, culture and that odd phenomenon we humans call love.

Lang’s affable stand-up is accompanied by a PowerPoint display comprising cute cartoons, witty captions, photoshopped pictures, sketches and video footage. While he is not the first comedian to employ these devices, he certainly uses them to full effect. Indeed, all the multimedia jiggery-pokery sometimes threatens to upstage Lang himself, as he forges ahead with his routine before we have a chance to absorb all the jokes onscreen. This hyperkinetic presentation might be a side-effect of teaching; no doubt his usual audience has a somewhat shorter attention span.

He needs to pace himself more slowly, perhaps pausing for more sips of water, the timing of which was giving him some trouble on opening night. This and a few other rough edges – the odd stumble over his words and technical glitch –will doubtless be smoothed out during the show’s run.

These quibbles aside, Love Factually is a joyous celebration of the amazing variety and occasional downright wackiness of the natural world. I reckon if I’d had Mr Lang as a science teacher I would have got further than Year 9 in Biology, and hope that he’ll continue to entertain – and stealthily educate – us adults from hereon in.

Rating: 3 stars out of 5