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Long before Vic Reeves or Harry Hill brought their brands of surreal humour to the mainstream, Martin Soan was tickling our fringe fancies with his impossible costumes and absurd enactments. While Soan is assuredly an originator of alternative comedy, he is not a stand-up as anyone would ordinarily define the concept. You won't find many gags in his set revolving around humorous observation or witty digression, but rather an energetic piece of one-man theatre with lightning fast changes of homemade costume and a ridiculous surplus of bizarre and unpredictable props. Watching Soan perform is more akin to watching a cartoon made flesh than a stand-up comedian. When you laugh, it will be an uncontrollable and childish giggle: his jokes are stealth bombers flying beneath the radar of our sophisticated adult sensibilities. When was the last time you laughed at a hat? Or a pair of fake eyebrows? Martin Soan is at once hilarious, terrifying and childish, and is a master of non-sequitur.
— Robert Wringham
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...Mad, Crazy, Zany, Silly - These all apply to Martin, who fills the stage with props, in his wild silly act. He has travelled the world, both as a solo, and as part of The Greatest Show On Legs...
— Martin Evening
...Martin played a central role in the early development of alternative comedy...
— Heidi Harrington
...Jean Cocteau meets Tom and Jerry...
— Jonathan Ross
...He closed his set with the funniest and most alarming use of elastic bands I've been privileged to guffaw at...
— Carol Sarler Sunday Times
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...As a comedian Martin is a hit, as a performance artist he is exceptional, and as a quick-change artist he's a genius...
— Chris Evans
A virtuoso of silliness
— Tony Allen
...A total lack of any sense, rhyme or reason to the extent that the insignificance of this show completely escaped me... The funniest thing I have ever seen!
— Clive James
...The most efficient prop maker in the world
— Bastard Son of Tommy Cooper
...A genius at prop problem solving
— The Great Voltini
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...Quick Change as a 60's theatrical genre was developed for performers who couldn't act, dance or sing and who weren't particularly funny...
— Brian Sewell excerpt from "Modern Theatre"
...The finest visual imagination I've seen from a comic...
— Malcome Haye Time Out
..Tommy Cooper on acid...
— The Face
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"...Martin is a gag artist, but not your run of the mill stand up comedian. He amuses and amazes with extroardinary use of everyday objects including U-bends, head gaskets and electronic drills. His unique style evokes genuine mirth and delight exercising all the laughter muscles from the belly, chest, throat and most prevailingly the head sending any audience away with a store of comic images which keeps them guffawing well into the middle of next week. A teenage Professor of Punch and Judy to an adolescent My Looniverse. A young Time Out award winner and now middle-aged Perrier Award winner nominee. Martin discards his accolades and defies definitiion as anything other than A master of Prop Comedy, Tommy Cooper on Acid...
His television appearances include: Chris Tarrant's OTT, Game for a Laugh, Black Adder, Cilla Black's Surprise, Surprise!, Jools Holland's The Tube, David Frost's Breakfast Telly and Jonathan Ross's Last Resort..."
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