Rich
Hall – 3:10 To Humour
Reviewed by Lee Bemrose
I
don't know about the title of this show – I really don't – but it
feels like some numpty somewhere involved in making a world class
comedy festival insisted that Rich Hall give his show a name, when in
fact the show could have just as easily have been called “Rich
Hall”. And I can kind of hear Rich saying something like, “Oh for
fuck sake you Goddamn marketing numpty – why does my show need a
name? Why do I need some stupid label? Tins of baked beans need
labels – am I a tin of Goddamned motherfucking baked beans? Okay.
Okay. How about... I dunno – 3:10 To Humour? That okay with you,
you piece of shit marketing numpty?” Sure, it could be a pun on
some obscure 1950s short story set in the wild west, but even so its
relevance to the show's content eludes me.
Rich Hall is one of
those comedy acts that really doesn't need to be labelled. He's Rich
Hall, and that's that. And he's just about the funniest guy you're
likely to see on stage so basically just buy a ticket and know that
you will laugh your arse off. I'm a reviewer and I'm going to spend
some of my own cash to see the show again, and I think that's a
bigger endorsement than any shitty little five star deal.
Rich
gives himself an off-stage introduction, then wanders on-stage
looking like he just woke up 10 minutes ago and really couldn't care
less. He tells us he is glad to be back in Melbourne and gets on with
some of his observations of the differences between Australians and
Americans. In politics, it seems, the concept of a coalition is
head-bending to Americans. And maybe he has a point – just look at
the coalition of shoe repairers and key cutters. I for one had never
considered how odd this coupling was, but now that this outsider had
pointed it out, why shoe repairs and key-cutting?
For some
reason – something to do with the various Bush politicians being
exactly the same - the comedian needed to do an impressively awful
impersonation of one of the impressively awful Baldwin brothers which
lead to Hall wandering slouch-shouldered off stage and into the
audience to heckle himself. Back up on stage he did another of the
Baldwin brothers (pretty much the same as the first), to come back
down into the audience to harangue himself with even harsher abuse.
This turned into him being an imaginary audience member heckling the
heckler... you've got to love a valid point wrapped up in warped
silliness.
And he is very good at verbal abuse, too. His
banter with audience members frequently involves comically vehement
insults which he totally dead-pans to hilarious effect. On this night
he did an admirable job of not turning his ability to insult on a
couple of particularly annoying “hecklers”. (I rabbit-ear the
word hecklers because it was the lamest version of heckling ever.
Drunk idiots incapable of stringing a sentence together, they shouted
idiotic monosyllabic grunts far too frequently throughout the show).
Where most of the audience were on the verge of telling these
incoherent retards incapable of handling their booze to STFU, Hall
engaged somewhat and even made one the star of an improv song,
showing that this gruff, thunderous looking personification of a
hangover has a degree of finesse about him.
The music is a lot
of fun. He talks with someone in the audience and builds an improv
song out of the snippets of their life he has extracted from them.
It's clever and funny when it works, and just plain funny when he
struggles to make it work.
The highlight of the show for me
was his ode to Bob Dylan, Bob
Dylan Is Getting Back Together.
I hadn't heard it or heard of it before and as a result it was kind
of... astonishing. I won't spoil it here by describing it, but it is
one of the funniest things I've seen. The build up to it is perfect
and... I really want to describe it here but will resist.
The
bit when the harmonica blares out klaxon-like... no. I really must
resist. Just go see it. This piece is almost the sole reason for me
going back for more.
But outside of the songs, he has more
stories and they are just priceless. As well as the observational
stuff (politics, marriage, America's idiotic love affair with guns...
lots of stuff with a message as well as just being funny), he has
been the guest on many, many television shows and has a vast store of
anecdotes to draw upon. His experience with the little guy on car
show Top Gear is brilliant.
In short, I think a certain
reviewer has a bit of a man crush on a certain dishevelled comedian
and he is looking forward to their next date.
