Brilliant Noble effort
Ross NobleThingsIpswich Regent
Dominic Castle
Ross Noble
Things
Ipswich Regent
FREQUENT watchers of live comedy often speculate about the amount of scripting that goes on with a performer.
The answer is probably that, apart from a bit of ad-libbing and audience banter, most comics put on shows that are tightly written and well-rehearsed.
Most Read
- 1 Glamping pods and shepherd huts proposed in holiday site expansion
- 2 Ipswich Town sign Brentford full-back Thompson on loan
- 3 'It is really sad': End of an era as popular pub landlords call time
- 4 Look inside 'immaculately presented' property with own bar and heated pool
- 5 Town reject bid for midfielder Fraser but no Matete move
- 6 Lorry carrying mobile unit pulled over on A14 for being too wide
- 7 Police apology after cars accidentally damaged by stinger device on A14
- 8 McKenna on offers for Harper and El Mizouni and Fraser's Town future
- 9 Adventure Golf attraction set to make way for new homes
- 10 10 Suffolk celebrities and where they went to school
Apart from Ross Noble. The chaotic Geordie can't possibly script most of the stuff he comes out with, the lunatic flights of fancy that he takes us on - can he?
Last night's performance was a ride on the back of a voluble monkey, swinging from random branch to surreal vine in a comedy jungle.
Many of the bursts of whimsy that make up a Noble set come from his interaction with the audience, who willingly offer up themselves for lampoonery. He has a brilliant gift for taking a single, apparently innocuous notion and running away with it.
For example a salute of greeting from one front row guest somehow evolved, over a journey of about ten minutes, into the revelation that a group of the young man's friends had camouflaged themselves in velvet and brown paint and now made up a large part of the seating in rows A-D.
He had a couple of rants, one of which led to the visually arresting spectacle of pop singer Beyonce punching a pig while shaking her booty on a treadmill; a moment later he was taking issue with an imaginary and very small pensioner at the cinema.
Noble has suffered a personal disaster recently; his Australian home was destroyed in the bush fires that swept the southern states but he still extracted something from the wreckage by (devout Catholics should look away now) having a pop at the Pope's offer of prayers following the inferno. "Lighting candles after a bush fire? That's not appropriate."
We were even given a little local treat with an anecdote about his visit to the Latitude Festival at Henham last year and how he organised an audience visit to the vegan food stand - for sausage rolls.
Of course there has to be a central scripted thread to his show, but you come away from a Ross Noble performance feeling that you've just seen a one-off, and a brilliant one.
Dominic Castle
