Ross Noble @ Scott Theatre
11:00pm, Wed 10 Mar 2004
Score: 8
Short Review: Manically funny… but…
Having seen Ross Noble at ff2002 (I could’ve sworn it was in Nova 1), I figured his surreal, rambling, improvised comedy would go down a treat this Fringe too. And, again, his intro is quite bizarre: a short cartoon by the Information Slug. Erm… yeah.
And then Noble bounds onstage, rapidly launches into banter involving Yetis and lecturns, then proceeds to try and disassemble the Scott Theatre in order to create a makeshift lecturn. He discovers a remnant from either Back To The Future or Short Circuit, expertly milks the laughs, then finds his audience mark for the night.
An occupational therapy student. Noble invents the OT Interpretive Dance (which makes several encores throughout the night), links in Ghost and huge pottery, goes shopping with his wife, scoots across via monkey-love to Stephen Hawking, throws in the time-honoured Aussies-swear-lots material, and then he’s gone.
It’s like watching a comedy whirlwind with long black hair. Ideas flit through his head quicker than you can say “hey, that’d be funny”; some are common threads for the evening (pig killing, that’s another one), some pass by as quickly as they were conceived. It’s fair to say that Noble is an improvisational genius.
…and yet, I don’t think the bigger stage at the Scott Theatre suits him. It seems less intimate, less immediate – more like an impersonal performance than an interaction, you know what I mean? Still, if you’ve got tickets to one of his remaining sold-out shows, you won’t be disappointed.