Stuart Black – Pale & Confused (FringeTIX)
Stuart Black @ Griffin’s Head Hotel
6:15pm, Sat 1 Mar 2008
Stuart Black seems like a perfectly nice chap. He patiently waited for the latecomers to arrive, started with some gentle puns, before bumbling into his regular act – which is more like a ramble than a structured joke-telling experience.
His material ranges from the personal (flyering people) to the surreal: owl-fuelled tirades on HD TV? Oooookay, then. He’s got a few Hicks-isms – “go with me on this” – and is constantly checking the time, but is otherwise nondescript, unremarkable, plain.
And that’s Black’s big problem. He’s really not that much better than that funny mate of yours who can hold a crowd at a party – except that he’s on stage in front of a small crowd of 30-or-so (though, as Penny Ashton told me, I’m rubbish at guessing crowd sizes).
He’s no Billy Connolly. His words, not mine.