Venue 150@EICC, 150 Morrison Street, 21-29 August (not 23), 8 pm
Rhod Gilbert is an angry man, and he knows it.
Much of his show revolves around his discovery that most of his family and friends agree with critics’ comments that he’s “difficult.” This, he claims, is not his fault, it’s the world’s fault for being so irritating and senseless. He proceeds to curse and rant his way through a series of illustrations of why he’s so angry, from the pointless complexity of washing machine settings to the useless features on hoovers. Beer can in hand, gesticulating wildly, occasionally kicking his props, Gilbert is the typical angry drunken lout given a stage upon which to howl and fume at the perceived idiocies of life. The nature of his complaints often lives up to critics’ comments (which he also rails against) that his shows are mired in trivial matters. But that, of course, is the crux of his appeal. Gilbert’s convulsive fury at the minor irritations of daily life expresses his fans’ own vexation on an operatic scale. This form of rant will particularly appeal to a certain brand of grumpy man who would secretly (or not so secretly) love nothing more than to have a public platform from which to vent with similar histrionics.
Gilbert is living this dream, and no one is safe from his vitriol. The press, women, Daily Telegraph readers, all are lambasted with gusto as Gilbert works himself into a frenzy. The odd title of the show is even explained as an attempt to thwart an overattentive fan who follows Gilbert about offering him gifts based on his current act’s name. The insults are clever enough to be funny for a spell, as most people can identify to some extent with Gilbert’s parodies. However, after a while his aggressive negativity comes to seem a bit unrelenting, and the show lags occasionally as Gilbert mopes over his negative image. Fortunately, his storytelling skill saves the day, and narrative episodes in which he recounts his increasingly surreal interactions with, in particular, a vacuum salesman and a hypnotherapist are hilarious highlights of the show.
The grand finale – in which Gilbert regresses to his childhood under hypnosis in order to get to the root of his crankiness – is particularly inspired in that it wraps up the many loose threads of Gilbert’s tirades, which until this point appeared to be but random episodes and complaints. Even the title of show becomes relevant in an ingenious twist that rounds the act off nicely and reveals there is order, however tenuous, behind the chaos. While Gilbert’s comedy may be too overbearing for some people’s taste, there’s no denying he has a deft touch when it comes to elaborating on everyday annoyances and turning them into humorous melodrama. For those who enjoy vicarious insult-slinging and don’t mind a healthy dose of profanity, Gilbert’s bemused quarrel with all of existence is sure to entertain.
3 stars
