Skip to main content

BUZZ: COMEDY REVIEW: RUSSELL KANE


COMEDY REVIEW: RUSSELL KANE

BY SUSIE WILD ⋅ MAY 27, 2010 ⋅ POST A COMMENT
FILED UNDER  , , , 
Russell Kane
Tues 25 May 2010
The Garage Comedy Club, Uplands, Swansea
****
Hyperactive multi-accented metrosexual Russell Kane prances about the stage like a natural jester playing up to the student element of the audience (drunker, easier to please). He is no beginner at this laughs malarkey; as he writes on his About Me section of his website: ‘I’ve had three of those Perrier nomination thingies, I do national tours – I’ve even written a play which is going to the Soho theatre… and I’m writing a novel.’ Get him. In 2010, in Swansea land, the gifted comic wittily fills stereotypes of Guardian and Daily Mail readers, Welsh vs English, Australians and Americans with absurd observations and personal anecdotes.
The Enfield stand-up has plenty in common with his namesakes Brand and Howard, at least in camp modern man-nerisms and flamboyance, if not Dandy dress sense. Plucking out traumas from his own childhood and puberty he turns pain and embarrassment for tricks – the tough father who only has to look at a shelf to put it up, the gran who catches him full-frontal masturbating after a night out on pupil-dilating substances. Kane skips about the stage with a sing-song Oxford voice, upon heading into non-PC territory (jokes about disability) he asides ‘Must not laugh. Quick, let’s make a cone of protection out of copies of the Guardian.’ At other times he gruffs up as a Gary or Dave, leans back on an imaginary transit van.
At the end he stops his meandering musings to tell a standard-form joke: ‘Philosophically speaking a Scotch egg is the most evil snack imaginable for a vegetarian. Because it has death on the outside, and the potential for life within.’
Kane is well-educated, and not afraid to show it, and yet his whirlwind set has its downfalls: often the humour sinks from silly to basic toilet humour or predictable outcomes feeling at odds with the insightful splices of thoughtful truths – relating to xenophobia, racism and bigotry – and the twisted laughs gained from the darker side of human life. Still he is an endearing performer, fast-paced, wide-eyed and swaggering; all skinny jeans and spot-on comic delivery. I’m certain we’ll be seeing more of him.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The More Than Human Perspective in Environmental Poetry: A Poem and Interview with Susie Wild

Interview by Zoë Brigley Welcome back to our series on writing the #MoreThanHuman. We offer a set of interviews with poets and writers on how they approach writing about the environment. The more-than-human is a phrase that seeks to side-step traditional nature-culture dualisms and draw attention to the unity of all life as a kind of shared commonwealth existing on a fragile planet. It also reminds us humans that there is more to life, that there is more world, than the human. It relocates us in relation to the mystery. This week we meet Susie Wild , author of the poetry collections Windfalls and Better Houses , the short story collection The Art of Contraception listed for the Edge Hill Prize, and the novella Arrivals . She tells us she lives in Rhondda Fach “with a TBR pile almost as high as Llanwonno”.
Post a Comment
Read more

GIG ALERT: Poetry Showcase with Natalie Ann Holborow, Rae Howells and Christina Thatcher

 
Post a Comment
Read more

Buzz Blog: The Passion | Stage Review

> REVIEWS THE PASSION | STAGE REVIEW BY  SUSIE WILD   ⋅  APRIL 27, 2011  ⋅   POST A COMMENT FILED UNDER    MICHAEL SHEEN ,  PORT TALBOT ,  THE PASSION **** Various locations, Port Talbot Fri 22 – Sun 24 April Cast includes: Michael Sheen, Matthew Aubrey, Nigel Barrett, Francine Morgan and Matthew Woodyatt. Michael Sheen became a Messiah of his home town over the Easter weekend with his leading role in a 72-hour epic retelling of The Passion, yet is was Port Talbot that was the real star of the show. For the sheer numbers in the audience (6000+), and national and international press attention  The Passion  is an ambitious event sure to go down in folklore. Two years in the planning and several months in community build up,  National Theatre Wales  joined forces with Cornwall’s  WildWorks  to create a multi-platform delivery of an age-old tale co-directed by local-boy-done-good  Michael Sheen  and the...
Post a Comment
Read more