FestBuzz

Who: Rich Hall
Where: Assem­bly Rooms
When: 10.30pm, daily until 31st August 2009
How Much: £13-£16

In 140 char­ac­ters or less: “Morose, witty and acer­bic: you’re in safe hands with Rich Hall– per­haps a lit­tle too safe.”

Rich Hall is per­fectly happy in front of a crowd of some 600 peo­ple, and they seem pretty damn happy to sit there as well. This show isn’t loaded polit­i­cal satire, but as Hall points out, he lost a large chunk of mate­r­ial with Bush out of office.

Despite his rise to fame in a char­ac­ter act, Hall has become a panel show stal­wart in the last few years and is well known for his gruff bark and his abil­ity to play the wit­less naif in the face of odd British cus­toms. In tonight’s show he is repeat­edly dive-bombed by an assort­ment of moths and flies: he con­fi­dently riffs off this and even man­ages to briefly catch one of his insect per­se­cu­tors, a handy metaphor for his quick wit and sharp instincts.

How­ever, this show is slightly dogged by the lack of struc­ture to the hour. Though Hall rarely seems to get off track, there’s no obvi­ous thread to his train of thought, and while the gags are strong, there’s not much sub­stance. Hall is best when he’s rail­ing against the world and its mis­takes, and he seems far more con­tent with life now than per­haps a few years ago.

Per­haps the nicest moments in this show come from his sto­ries of rural life in Mon­tana, deal­ing with prairie dog pests and fear­some locals. His irri­ta­tion at these irk­some crit­ters gets him more fired up than in most bits of the show: though he never lets this rant get unwieldy. Unable to really mock Obama (the clos­est he gets is point­ing out The Audac­ity of Hope is a some­what mean­ing­less title) in the cur­rent cli­mate, he turns his gaze on Bill Clin­ton which makes the mate­r­ial feel a lit­tle out of date. How­ever, he’s clearly still clued up about polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tions and I’m dis­ap­pointed that in the ques­tion and answer sec­tion all he is quizzed about it whether he enjoys QI.

Despite some forced moments of audi­ence inter­ac­tion, Hall has a large back cat­a­logue of sto­ries and jokes to draw from, and it’s great to hear him when he gets fired up at some odd inter­na­tional news story.

There’s no bite to this show, but it’s slick, ratio­nal, well paced.

Fes­t­buzz Rating:

Words: Elise Bramich