Arthur Vinegar: Good Boy ****

A man wanders through the aisle at Metro Comedy Club, acknowledging various audience members and welcoming them. But this is the 25^th Prague Fringe festival and of course there is more to this than meets the eye: Arthur Vinegar (Euan Fraser) is only wearing underpants and a grubby vest.

Over the course of the next 50 minutes or so, Vinegar proceeds to clown and entertain, all loosely themed around his desire to be a “good boy”. An audience member is nominally designated to be the arbiter of whether he is good or bad, upon a signal from another person. This is a device partly to keep the narrative thread woven and, I suspect, to keep the audience continually guessing.

The antics come thick and fast. Audience members’ possessions are purloined and used as props. There is further clowning involving underpants, braces, a circuit breaker (yes really), and hair grooming. There is a whole series of carrot related comedy bits, followed by a personal highlight, in which Vinegar implores an audience member to choose their favourite egg (from a choice of two). The show wraps up with a routine involving his cow Daisy and offspring.

If all of this sounds a bit daft – well, Arthur Vinegar: Good Boy is a clowning show. But it’s so much more: Fraser is an accomplished clown, but so is his comic timing, physicality, mime and stand-up. He is smart and quick-witted and, with a little sharpening of material, will have a big future.