Review: How Can I Help You (Pleasance Courtyard)

Likeable bloke plays guitar at audience instead of getting a diary

What does it take to turn a seemingly ordinary life story into a noteworthy stage performance? It is a topic I have written about before, but the margins become even finer when it comes to solo storytelling shows – especially with a guitar. In How Can I Help You Callum Patrick Hughes details his life as a recovering people-pleaser; discovering his faults and learning to set boundaries. With thousands of shows demanding our attention at the Edinburgh Fringe, a show like this must either have an extraordinary tale to tell or an extraordinary way to tell it.

From the moment we arrive the people-pleaser interactions begin, helped by the fact that he clearly knows several audience members. His welcoming demeanour is a product of his years as a bartender and his experience as a performer, but it is all with an air of theatrical professionalism. Hughes casually blends theatre, comedy, and music as though it were second nature. But as the performance continues we drift further from the original premise and more into a rambling, notably woman-centric, account of his life. We hear name after name of girls we barely get to know before we are told about how the relationship ended. Hughes does try to draw it together with a recurring bit where he tells a woman that he isn’t in a good place, his finances are uncertain, and his career even more so, and we discover whether he will be able to go through with the break up. But his priority seems to be less about dissecting that people-pleaser mentality and more about providing a detailed account of his love life and, indeed, his career, including an extended segment about the success of his Fringe debut last year. As an audience member, it feels like you are trapped on a date with a man playing guitar at you, topped off with a Radiohead cover to take the cliché home.

Musically, most of the performance consists of Hughes strumming while talking and occasionally breaking out into corny, literal lyrics. It comes as no surprise when he tells us they were all written when he was a teenager. The problem with How Can I Help You is not just that the telling of the story is unextraordinary, it is that (right now at least) there isn’t much story to tell. The people-pleaser premise isn’t strong in itself and in execution, it is even weaker. Hughes is clearly a professional who is very comfortable on stage, but here it isn’t enough to please. Two stars.