Rich Hall delivers a hilarious evening of standup comedy at the Playhouse...
Rich Hall is a brilliant comedian, musician and writer and although there are three conspicuously empty seats in the front row, the audience at the Nottingham Playhouse are packed in and about to enjoy two hours of comedy magic.
Hall begins by offering up several humorous anecdotes on the differences between British and American politics. He quips that the 81-year-old Biden may have have in fact died several times during his presidential term as he is so generic that he can be easily replaced without anyone noticing. Sadly Hall’s political comedy material has been cut in half since Trump vacated the White House - you simply can’t get as many jokes out of Biden. Unlike Trump, he’s a functional President who hasn’t recently been in convicted of the crime of paying off a sex-worker.
Hall interacts with the audience throughout and admits to enjoying the British sense of humour. He splits his time between Montana in the USA and London in the UK. He owns a small ranch in Montana and an apartment in London with his Liverpudlian filmmaker wife Karen and their two children. He’s currently mildly obsessed with Buxton and Belper, but perhaps only due to finding these place names amusing - the same can presumably be said of the humour he finds in Burton Joyce, Long Eaton and Nuthall. Naturally the audience responds favourably to Hall tailoring his material to their locality.
and the results are (by their own admission) if not musically and lyrically perfect, very funny
The second half of the set is musical. Having seen Hall live once before many years ago and delighting in his talent for musical comedy, I know that we are about to listen to some very funny, semi-improvised songs in the Country music style that Hall loves to have fun with - but not make fun of.
Hall and his band perform several songs before revealing that they received a request to perform a song from their extensive back catalogue. Like the rock stars that they are they agreeably perform the song - about a George Foreman Grill (there are other songs with similar names but you should accept no substitute) - to peels of laughter from the audience. When Hall enquires as to who requested the song… I admit that it was me!
Hall speaks to several members of the audience and despite getting some responses that are tricky to integrate into country music songs Hall and his band do their best, and the results are (by their own admission) if not musically and lyrically perfect, very funny.
The evening ends with a bang - when Hall recounts a story no doubt taken from his new book entitled Nailing It (which instead of being filled with career highlights is actually filled with tales of the times when things went spectacularly wrong) about the time when he and his band visited a Southern bar and were rather forcefully coerced into performing Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama by the locals.
Rich Hall: Shot from Cannons was at the Playhouse Theatre on Tuesday 11th June 2024
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