I am Google (Laughing Horse @ Temple Bar, Brighton)

I am Google, a one man show, performed by Hollywood actor Craig Ricci Shaymak is a geeky spectacular. A unique performance in which we meet Google and his best friends, Twitter, Yahoo and Wikipedia. However, his arch-enemy Bing is not invited. You might say that this show could be just what you are searching for!

The theatre is small and intimate, and at first doesn’t look like a show is about to take place, as a man sat behind a desk at the front greeted us and handed out large biscuits, to make sure our ‘cookies were enabled’. We soon realise that this is the main actor, as he suddenly leaps from his desk. He dances around the room with Like a G6 blaring from his iphone and, with the ice suddenly broken in quite an unusual way, we really don’t know what to expect next.

This is, however, all part of the act. After we get our heads around the fact that this man is acting as Google himself, the show becomes very funny. We are all asked to ‘Login’ and are shown a behind the scenes view of his take of Google, which is depicted as an overweight American man in a Google t-shirt sitting behind a desk, with a stack of books, looking up each topic. While searching, he is constantly taking phone calls to make new searches and you see his frustrations as he has to find each answer. As long as you have a geeky sense of humour, and a good knowledge of computers, you will be crying with laughter in no time.

The main section of the show is the “Live Search” sketch. The audience are asked to call out words or phrases for Google to “Live Search” for us on the spot. Unfortunately the audience on this night did not seem to want to participate, and stared blankly at the front causing quite an awkward silence. Shaymak did his best to encourage people to come forward and a few people sheepishly said a few phrases – his answers in return were very funny. The audience then stepped up to shout out complicated things almost impossible to answer which spoilt it a bit as I feel that, had we had a more fun participating audience, the show would have flowed so much better.

Overall this show was brilliantly unique and designed for the geeks amongst us, and with the right audience it would be incredibly funny. Giving out cookies at the beginning and encouraging interaction makes it very different to other shows and brilliantly funny – as long as the audience comes with an open mind, a Gmail login and a readiness to stand up and join in the fun!