It became obvious early on that, despite Grantham working in comedy for a number of years now, the man was slightly nervous. It didn’t help the fact that he felt the need to constantly put himself, or his show, down for the first 10 minutes. The worst part was he had no reason to be nervous. Grantham is a funny man, with some great material. Once he got over his initial nerves the show became something quite memorable.

Grantham’s insistence on including the audience was like nothing I’d ever seen before. It was clear that he wanted to make the show as much ours as it was his. He let members of the audience choose what he was going to talk about, and when. He had a great rapport with his audience, and thank goodness he did. Its always a huge risk when a comedian tries to include the audience in their show, and more often than not it will fail. But whether it’s because they all grew to like Grantham pretty quickly, or they’d simply had to much to drink, the audience went along with Grantham and at times were almost as funny as the comedian himself. Grantham was at his funniest when responding to the audience, showing an obvious talent for improv.

Sure, he’s not perfect. A couple of jokes fell flat and with any other audience, the show could have been a disaster. But it was a fun, funny and enjoyable hour- what more can you ask? And how many lightbulbs does it take? Well, you’ll have to check out Grantham’s show to find out…

The biggest problem with the show was the script. The story seemed all to predictable in a time when Hollywood is releasing a new superhero film every 5 minutes. What Bullet needed to do was stray away from that formula and create a more complex, interesting, and suspenseful piece to sustain the audience for just over an hour. The fact that the script simply wasn’t particularly funny (besides a few chuckles from the audience) didn’t help (despite the “comedy” in the title).

By half way it became clear that Bullet was simply a vehicle for the performers to make funny voices. This wasn’t necessary a bad thing. The performers, for the most part, did a fine job. All of them were able to keep their distinctive voices intact for the length of the show, and it was clear they were enjoying themselves. Stefan Taylor did a good job as Bullet, but wasn’t particularly memorable, despite being the title character. It was Louise Joy McCrae as the evil Dostoyana who really stole the show by bringing so much passion and enthusiasm to the role. The biggest criticism of the show, perhaps, was that she was so underused. Whenever she was speaking, you could almost forget the problems with the script.

The opposite could be said of Nicholas Barker-Pendree. Obviously, this man has considerable talents as a voice actor and the producers wanted to utilize this. At first this was fine, but by half way through the show, he’d been so overused (four separate characters, at last count, all of them fairly prominent) you almost grew tired of him.

Despite the talent of the performers, it was not enough to save the show. It wasn’t very engaging and simply dragged on too long. There is, however, potential for the show and with some work to the script, the producers can create a much more interesting experience for the audience.

His performance was energetic, passionate, friendly and engaging, something which worked well given the setting of the show. The audience, there were only about 10 of us (mostly friends of Toby), were all seated on crappy fold out chairs, in a tiny little room on the top floor of the Portland Hotel. It was definitely the most intimate show I’ve attended, but for this young comedian it worked so well. It was refreshing to be able to sit less than a foot away from the performer, it made us all feel more involved and made for a better experience.

The show began with a joke about Toby being kicked out of Seaworld for f**king a dolphin. Sure, it was funny and the audience laughed but it’s not exactly the most intelligent way to introduce a stand up show that, essentially, is about how the human race are getting stupider.

From there, however, Toby somehow managed to give a solid, very funny and enlightening performance. What made his show better than a lot of other shows out there was his ability to tell a combination of the sex, footy and beer jokes we’ve grown so used to from other Aussie male comedians, but combine this with his own personal insights into issues that obviously mean a lot to him: the importance of reading, and of education and how we must give back to our community and stop thinking just about ourselves.

By the second half through, the show became almost boring. The dinner party story (which had been the centre of the entire show) started to drag on a bit and become stale and, whilst Toby was still just as friendly and energetic, it started to become more of a personal rant than comedy. Despite this, the few good jokes he did get in were still a lot better than a lot of other comedians working today.

An audience of ten is not enough to make a living, and it would be a shame for a talent like Xavier Toby to go by unnoticed. So, if you get a chance, come and check him out at this year’s Fringe – you won’t be sorry.