The first part of this Triple Bill delivered. Kai Humphries is a low-key Scottish stand-up who offers the kind of humorous presence that makes you want to invite him to dinner – though perhaps not if your mother is coming.
His is a gentle and very funny act that manages to be transgressive without being crude and benign without being banal. Humphries’ slot is a triumph of material over manner. He expends no particular effort on creating a persona. He doesn’t shout or swear unnecessarily and he comes across as a thoroughly nice guy with some very funny stories to tell.
The material is great, grounded in every day experiences that make it disconcertingly believable. We move from gym encounters to massage to the home front where Humphries slips into character briefly for a priceless sustained riff about what his mother thought his brother was doing in the bathroom. What’s more, though he certainly has plenty of material below the belt he understands that the nether regions are not funny just because you mention them. You have to say something funny about them.
If the rest of the show had been as good as this, we would have struck comedy gold.
Unfortunately it wasn’t. Humphries fellow Scott Carl Donnelly was up next and he certainly had his funny moments. Donnelly’s material is more social and political but much of it is also more familiar. He dwells on divorce and on the ridiculous criticisms of gay marriage.
He did send me to Google to check his statement that there is not no-fault divorce in the UK and I was astonished to learn it is true. Like much bad social policy, that is a gift for a comedian but Donnelly’s take is a little too bitter to make the most of it.
The real problem with Donnelly came in the delivery: his ‘camp hetero’ persona depends on us finding that kind of ambivalence inherently funny, a dated and cheap schtick which just gets in the way of the good lines and often muddies his delivery.
But Donnelly’s delivery was positively cool compared to what was up next. Tom Slade burst on to the stage shouting into the microphone a stream of ‘fucks’. Nothing terribly funny or orginal about that.
I might have found some of his act amusing if he hadn’t been yelling so loud or gesturing so often to accept applause that he wasn’t really getting. As it was, some nicely structured material about online discounting was mixed up with so much posturing and cursing and taking potshots at his wife that I just wanted them to bring Kai back.
A Humphries show alone would have got scored four star and Slade not more than two. Donnelly splits the difference and leaves as with a compromise score.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Best of the Edinburgh Fest
RMIT Capitol Theatre, Swanston St
Melbourne International Comedy Festival
www.comedyfestival.com.au
27 March – 20 April
