Review: Ross Noble’s Humournoid
Posted on: Wed 13 Mar 2019
by David Cavanagh
Ross Noble has become something of a fixture in the Adelaide Fringe over recent years and, once again, he doesn’t fail to deliver. His new show, Humournoid, playing in his Adelaide home away from home, The Thebarton Theatre, takes a look at what might happen if a creature is created simply to do stand up. No such creature exists, of course, but Ross Noble is as close to being this mythical ‘humournoid’ as is humanly possible.
Even before the show started we were treated to the best ‘turn off your mobile phone’ announcement ever. This should be adopted by every venue, and it certainly worked. A giant Ross Noble head then slowly split apart and out bounded the man himself, and from that point on he never stopped moving, using the whole stage to deliver his non-stop monologue. Noble began by stating that he was going to politically correct during the show, but I must say that in this regard he failed splendidly. As well as picking on audience members, for reasons as varied as a raucous laugh, wearing sunnies on the head and heckling (of course), the first half of the show tackled subjects as varied as pandas and pelvic floors (and I leave that to your imagination). Noble is the master of the tangent, being able to diverge wildly from his topic but then return to it some considerable time later. The only other comedian equally able in this regard is Billy Connolly, but Noble has ratcheted it up a notch from him. After an hour the almost capacity audience needed a break to regain some composure before the comedic assault began again. Noble now took aim at Lionel Ritchie and told us the hilarious tale of his father’s ‘viking’ funeral. He also continued to harangue the audience members he picked on in the first half.
The second hour slipped by all-too-quickly, but we were treated to an encore, in which Noble recounted the perils of half-marathons and Deep Heat rub. Enough said. Ross Noble is a comedic genius, being able to elicit laughter from the most unlikely sources. His audience went home sore but happy.
Humournoid is playing at The Thebarton Theatre, Henley Beach Road, Thebarton until March 16. Check your Fringe guide for details.
