SHOW: Spamily - The tone thus set, Robertson comes on stage and explains the foundation of the show, and the reason for its title: being in-cluded on the mailing list for the family newsletter of an American family (with a completely different surname).

CAST: Warren Robertson
VENUE: Masonic Hall, Grahamstown

They’re Mormons, with loads of kids – very different to Robertson, other than that, he concedes, he also had a great childhood, which is not terribly useful in career terms (receiving love and affirmation every single day is  not funny, he complains).

The achievements of the children in this distant family put unwanted pressure on Robertson. In his thirties, he has no guaranteed job, no house and no financial security; his correspondent’s 21-year-old son has all of those.

 Accepting his relative shortcomings may be part of the reason that there’s close to no Mormon-baiting (or attacks on  religion in general, really) in the set, despite the comic’s confessed atheism.

Another confession is that, for Robertson, messing with people is a default setting, which makes sustained relationships of any kind rather difficult.

For instance, his standard for the ideal woman has to do with her ability to help him survive a zombie apocalypse – not an everyday perspective when it comes to dating, and more entertaining for that.

Towards the end of the set, there’s a twist in the content of the e-mails and, as a result, in Robertson’s tone, which is another characteristic that sets his act apart from many of his peers.

Overall, though, the pace is uneven, and Robertson doesn’t connect with his audience as much as either party would probably like.

Some of that is down to some particularly sophisticated jokes that prove too much for the suppertime crowd, whose reaction (or lack thereof) seems to frustrate the performer.

Some of it may stem from this being an act with room to develop in terms of attitude and atmospherics.

Robertson is smart enough to see the value of keeping up his side of that bargain; here’s hoping his future audiences do the same.