Empire Theatre, Eden Court, Inverness,18 March 2009

Ross Noble

IT IS ALMOST impossible to capture in words the energy of Ross Noble possesses on stage. If you could harness the power of this man’s imagination you could power a city or possibly a small underdeveloped country. From the moment he stepped on stage comic ideas began to explode inside his mind, instantly producing a firework display of funny images and bizarre meanderings.

After only ten minutes on stage he had burned through more material than most comedians get through in an hour. His mind sparks ideas at a dazzling speed and clearly even Ross himself is sometimes surprised by the things that come out of his mouth.

Immediately he walks on stage he has a warm connection with the audience ­ you want to be there and hear what this man will find when he rummages about in the corners of his own brain. It is almost as though he opens the lid of his mind and shows you the whirring cogs inside as he grapples with his own odd version of reality.

There is no pretence in what Ross does. He simply lets his imagination flow and follows, as fascinated as the audience that watches him, whereever it leads. Despite the natural humour he undoubted possesses, Ross’ performance is not simply the ramblings of a deranged mind – even if it appears that way.

Ross’ juggling of ideas and his ability to run from one story to another, leaving several hanging in the air, only to return to his original train of thought when one story is finished, is a great skill honed by many hours on stage. The title of the show, Things, is clearly an excuse to talk about pretty well anything he feels like. Another title for the show could easily have been I Digress, because that’s pretty well exactly what he did all night.

He opened the show by conjuring up the existence of Inverness’s only Chinese acrobat bin man. Quite where this character came from it is hard to say but by the end of the evening he had become frighteningly real. Whilst his act may seem chaotic he does employ, to hilarious effect, some classic comedy techniques.

He is a master of the “call back”, a technique where a comedian will constantly refer back to earlier memorable parts of his act. This is very effective because the performer is referring to something that exists in the recent communal memory of that strange thing we call and audience.

Ross showed supreme skill in this regard and clearly has an awesome memory as, even in full flight, he is able to refer back to things he said half an hour ago that are almost forgotten by everyone except him.

Ross has also remembered something that most of us forget in the hurly burly of modern existence, that is just what a joy it can be to simply play. In watching Ross on stage that is fundamentally what you are looking at. He is a 34-year-old child who has retained the ability to have fun and play with the world around him.

Almost as soon as we can walk we are encouraged to grow up, to put our childhood behind us. We are told to forget what a joy it was to run about pretending to fight pigs or pretend to be a creature from space. Ross’s secret is that he has retained that ability and is able to reconnect us with the repressed child within all of us.

The physicality of his humour was also much in evidence. His ability to morph into different characters such as the alien mentioned above was a joy to watch. He careered about the stage dressed in black with bright yellow shoes his wild mane of hair flowing about. Behind him he had, for no apparent reason, a fifteen foot many headed monster that was his only prop and possibly one of his only remaining possessions after his Australian home was destroyed in a bush fire.

Ross’ is clearly in his element performing on stage. His enjoyment spread to the audience and he held the theatre entranced for over two hours as he teased us all with his ramblings. This was an outstanding performance by a man who is undoubtedly one of the finest comic performers in the UK, if not the world.

No one can have left the theatre without feeling that they had glimpsed, even if only for a little while, what the world looks like to a mischievous child. If, one dreary morning, you open your curtains to see a Chinese bin man cart-wheeling down your street, you have Ross to thank as a little bit of his madness has crept into our world. (See, nice call back there).

© John Burns, 2009

Links

• Ross Noble

• John Burns at Purple Comedy