Ross Noble -
The Dancehouse Theatre, Manchester
Thursday 20th November
2003
There can't be many comedians who take to
the stage without much of an idea what their show is going to be about. Lesser
comedians would stutter, mumble and shuffle off but not Ross Noble. That is the
way he prefers to work and it certainly seems a method that suits his style of
comedy. He has the ability to create humour from start to finish; most of which
appears to be improvised. There are certain topics you can sense he had in mind
to mention but even those don't seem to be scripted in the way that some
comedians perform.
Noble is a delightful
mixture of surrealism and whimsy. His mental wanderings are consistently amusing
and mean that the audience can never anticipate which direction he is taking.
This is where Noble excels. He takes you on a journey of sharp observation
comedy that is loosely connected to the point at which the joke started,
although sometimes after twenty minutes of material it is hard to remember
exactly where that was. Noble never forgets though and regularly brings the joke
back to its origins before embarking on another tangent. The time spent watching
him flies by. He commands the attention of the audience in the way that only
good comedians can.
The way he interacts
with the crowd is hilarious, making jokes from any slip-ups they may make while
he is talking to them. One poor man who claimed that a dance floor in Noble's
hometown of Newcastle was a rotating floor, rather than a revolving floor, could
only watch as his remark was used as the basis for about half an hours material
involving rotisserie chickens and getting to the club early to claim your prong.
Sometimes on these surreal tangents he takes there are moments you can sense he
stops to think that he has gone a little off kilter but his ability to
whimsically create something else of amusement ensures these situations pass in
a moment. Gradually links do form during the show and he often refers to
previous jokes to embellish upon the one he is telling at present. However, it
is hardly the most linear path that Noble chooses to follow.
Because of his preference to perform in comedy venues
rather than on television shows Ross Noble remains one of comedies best kept
secrets. Anybody who tells such comical stories about such a diverse range of
subjects won't remain relatively unknown for long though. The fact that the
majority of his act is improvisation as well means that it is unlikely that any
one show is the same as another.
