How does a storyteller keep the audience engaged when the story is about nothing?

At the risk of sounding very basic, I see Martin Dockery every year along with all of the other elderly Fringe-goers. I thought I hated storytelling shows until I saw his work. He’s frenetic and electric. His stories whirl around and around in tangents and flashbacks that feel random in the moment but always end up connecting back unexpectedly. If you see him enough, you can tease out a lot of familiar ideas and themes in his work, and yet they never feel stale.

This show was, as another audience member put it after the show, pure agony. The repetition feels like you’re going nowhere. The story is about nothing. The play begins again and again and again. And yet, I could’ve watched another hour of this.

No one is doing it like him. I never know what to expect going into his storytelling shows, except that I will be equally shocked and delighted. I haven’t been disappointed yet.