Stop Trying To Look At. Canal Café Theatre.

In earlier iterations writer and performed Jacob Grunberger’s autobiographical single hander Stop Trying To Look At… had the words My D**K tacked on at the end of the title. Perhaps the reference attracted the wrong crowd or perhaps it was just a little too fruity for the delicate sensibilities of London’s Little Venice. Whatever the reason, in the Canal Café’s current version the “dick” has been firmly zipped up. It is a shame.

Grunberger tells us the genitalia reference “may seem like a cheap gag, but actually it’s a metaphor” for a lifetime spent feeling vulnerable and on show, exposed to the unsympathetic naked glare of peers, teachers, and audiences alike. The performer’s aim in the 55-minute comedy is to unzip a little: to become something more than “a dark horse and a closed book”.

A quirky combination of rap, dance, verse, monologue, and stand-up comedy certainly reveals some glimpses into Grunberger’s life which, though difficult, is not entirely out of the ordinary.  He loses his father to cancer aged 5, his paternal memories now bound up in a folder of letters and stories dad left behind. His mother takes him on a nomadic childhood journey through Scotland to Essex. A primary school French teacher questions how his family could only have two members, to which the boy has no answer. A dreadful accident, perhaps the result of mental health issues or drug use, leaves mum crippled in hospital.

Time is then spent with a maternal grandmother who loves him but cannot really cope. Adolescence at boarding school, marked by persistent bedwetting and teachers of patchy quality, ends up in a violent encounter with the police. A degree at Bristol University, famous for “drugs, clubs, and posh white women”, sees Grunberger have his fill of all three. He faces his own challenges with mental health and drug use.

Grunberger is an attractive stage presence with solid comic timing and movie-star charisma. Noel Wallace’s direction is punchy enough. But ultimately opinions will vary as to whether all these distinct emotional jigsaw pieces add up to much of a coherent picture. “There is a piece of me that you don’t see” we hear at one point. He is making a joke about his dick (anticipate many such gags), but it is true of the man as a whole. For whatever reason one feels this is a writer and performer holding an awful lot back. Fair enough, artists are free to deliver entirely on their own terms. But some may leave the show feeling Grunberger is as much an enigma when he leaves the stage as when he arrives. Metaphorically speaking, Stop Trying To Look At… needs more dick.

Writer: Jacob Grunberger

Director: Noel Wallace