John Robertson is a very, very naughty boy. And as the title of his latest show implies, rather excitable. The 40-something Australian comedian is better known for his consistently sold-out interactive game show The Dark Room, a high-energy crowd-work show inspired by impossible-to-win multiple-path adventure games. With such a show requiring so much energy, you’d expect John’s other show to be a rather sedate affair.

You’d be wrong. Excitable Boy has Robertson leaping and capering across the small venue like some possessed court jester, funneling a near preternatural level of energy to tease and entertain the audience. This is mostly crowd work and observational comedy blended together in a seamless way; there’s no malice to the act; instead, what we have here is a celebration of the absurdity of the human condition, with John acting as a living firework of sorts.

The buy-in and engagement from the audience is pretty much instant, and we’re starting to see what happens when a crowd who knows what to expect regularly comes to one of these style shows; the result is that John’s energy feeds the audience, and their response feeds the performer even more, until we are all at our limit with laughter. The ‘boy’ in Excitable Boy is a misnomer; the man’s a living rocket. We’re pretty sure he can’t be stopped by conventional means.

We have said this before, and we’ll say it again, but we still have no idea why Robertson isn’t more well known; he’s pretty much become an Edinburgh Festival Fringe legend at this point, so why he hasn’t barrelled onto some panel show or other is beyond us. Go see this show, because it’s very good.

Excitable Boy is part of the Free Fringe. You have no excuse, details can be found here.