Noble: A Prize

I had been cautioned before going into Ross Noble not to believe the hype, that, contrary to the official spiel, the wildly prolific cult Englishman’s act wasn’t all improvised.

Didn’t matter a bit. From start to finish, his one-man show was a densely packed display of energy, absurdism, audience interaction and controlled chaos. With his long hair, boy-band headset and surfer-dude-by-way-of-Monty-Python accent, Noble turned one table of devoted fanboys into a modest roomful of converts, just as he turned the presence of one audience member’s baked-good snack into a monstrous running gag involving the woman, her friend, her mother, the tacos on another table, his miraculous ability to “feed, like, 100 people with just some nachos” and his status as “some kinda Mexican Jesus.”

Some bits on Madonna, Boba Fett and a brass band providing a peculiar soundtrack to porn were obviously rehearsed, but then it was right back into 10 minutes on imagined tourist groups taking in the Musee JPR venue in all its questionable glory. After all, why bother with jokes when your stream of consciousness leads even you deep into an entertaining unknown?