list.co.uk/festival Tom Shillue | FESTIVAL COMEDY
MISSION POSSIBLE
Endorsed by Daniel Kitson, Tom Shillue is a little bit afraid of Edinburgh. Murray Robertson
reckons if the American sticks to his plan,
he’ll be just fi ne
‘I’d never been to a stand-up show before I started doing it’
Last year, comedian and storyteller Tom Shillue embarked on a project to record a dozen spoken-word albums over 12 months. While many people assumed it was a short-lived gag, Shillue saw it through to the bitter end. ‘It was exhausting,’ he says. ‘The artistic part of it wasn’t that hard. It was just the busy work of getting it all done and kind of ignoring my family and other obligations.’
The benei t from all his hard graft is a mother lode of material for his Fringe debut. ‘What I’m trying to do for this show is take a little best-of from those stories and weave them together and try to make a bigger tale. But basically all my stories are the same thing: stories about my life, either stories from the past, about growing up in New England, or stories from my present life here in New York, and I try to use them to i gure out bigger points.’
Not only is Shillue a regular on the New York comedy club
scene, he supports Jim Gafi gan on tour across the world and has a regular spot as part of Jimmy Fallon’s barbershop quartet. Very much in demand in the States, his appearance here is thanks to Daniel Kitson who couldn’t believe he hadn’t played the UK. Shillue sees the Fringe as a chance to try out his material on a European audience. He also views it as a real challenge.
‘Yes, it’s huge and I am a little bit scared,’ he admits. ‘I want people to like me, that’s my main thing. When I’ve been overseas so far, it’s been opening for Jim Gafi gan in these big theatres. So people come out to see him, they take a gamble on me and they’re usually nice. But this is all on me.’ ■ Tom Shillue: Impossible, Assembly Rooms, 0844 693 3008, 1–24 Aug (not 11), 9pm, £10 (£9). Preview 30 Jul, £9 (£8).
31 Jul–7 Aug 2014 THE LIST FESTIVAL 41