Presented by A-List Entertainment
@Thebarton Theatre
FRIDAY 9th March (until March 17)

Ross Noble is a very funny but strange and weird guy. His description of himself as a deranged scarecrow is probably as close as you’d get to an apt description of  his appearance. One of my friends said that she finds him too manic, too energetic, too over the top to deal with, but I personally don’t find this to be the case. That said, seeing his show is certainly tiring. Your face and stomach hurt from laughing so hard, and for one lady sitting across the aisle from me, an oxygen mask falling from the ceiling to help her breathe probably wouldn’t have been amiss.

His stage backdrop is pretty interesting and I suppose the easiest way to sum up the show is by saying that the images in the publicity shots are pretty much what you get: a bizarre assortment of things that spring from the weird and wonderful mind of Mr Ross Noble on the night.

The lemon-coloured polos of security staff at Thebarton Theatre created quite a long off-road section at the beginning of the show, and when he brought up his experience in a restaurant here in Adelaide he rapidly got veered off topic. It took all the rest of the first half and part of the second half to get back to the story.

His humour is largely spontaneous, very little seems like it could be part of a plan. Anything that could be seen as part of the show’s general plan Noble quickly links back to various other sections of the night’s proceedings that you know must have been impromptu. For example, I’m sure he didn’t plan on someone leaving him some smiley fritz on the stage during the intermission, and I’m equally sure he didn’t plan on putting it on his face like a mask until just moments before he did so.

He also dangled said smiley fritz, into the face of a woman in the crowd while singing about making love to her. Then he asked to borrow her sunglasses, put the fritz back on his face and the sunglasses over the top and danced around claiming that now he had the mobility he required. Upon trying to return the sunglasses he was mortified to discover that the woman did not want them back as she is a Muslim. He felt really terrible, apologised and offered her some free merchandise and to reimburse her for the sunnies.

I should also point out the educational nature of his show: if you’d like to learn about throwing urine on koalas, you should have been there Friday. As this conversation too came from a gift left on stage, it’s unlikely to come up again unless someone leaves a koala for him at every interval.

The show would be very different from night to night, but things covered include ‘the leg with the most twitter followers’ at the Oscars with an interpretation twist, or twisted interpretation perhaps I should say, and his musings on his human child. His use of the word human before child made me wonder – what other kind of children does he have?  Noble himself wonders about things like why we turn our heads to the side when we’re slightly confused about something, and what exactly we think this will achieve. He also doesn’t stay still for more than five seconds at a time. My Nan would’ve said he has ants in his pants.

His show really lives up to its title offering an overload of nonsense. He also took us on a journey into the lyrics of Bohemian Rhapsody, gave us a very bizarre look at how a man might make a lovely cup of tea for his lady-friend with his testicles but warned of the dangers of lulling said lady-friend into a hypnotic state should the movement be too rhythmic.

I have the sinking suspicion that this is all sounding very weird and in a way it was, but that isn’t to say it wasn’t all very funny too, which it was. I guess you just had to be there … and if you weren’t maybe you should get yourself a ticket to an upcoming show of his? I know you want to know how to hurl urine at koalas and make tea with your balls or acquire similar necessary skill-sets.

His brand of comedy may not be for everyone. It’s a belly-laugh inducing kind rather than the kind greeted with a smattering of polite applause and murmured comments including the words witty and very droll. And quite a lot of it is firmly placed in the oh-so-funny but oh-so-wrong category. He even noted this, impressed with our capability to laugh and clap at a joke while also making grunts of disapproval. But if there are many things I disapprove of, having too much of Ross Noble’s brand of nonsense is not one of them.