Glenn Wool – Where Is Hell?
As soon as Glenn Wool graced the stage, all of my expectations were thrown out the window. I was expecting somebody youthful and cheeky, but the man before me appeared to be a long-haired, mustached canadian hillbilly. There was no time to be taken aback, however, as he immediately burst into an hilarious introduction of improvised material—spotting an audience member in a bright jacket down the front and asking the rest of the audience why they hadn’t come prepared for “spangly jacket night” provided big laughs and bonded him to the audience quickly. He even managed to make some material about it being “cheap tuesday” seem fresh and original.
Rounding out his impro with a brief audience test to decide if they would respond better to some thinking humour or “bum fucky jokes” (the audience tended toward the latter) he then moved into a section of drug-based material. The audience didn’t respond as well to this as his improvised material, but there were still some big laughs to be had, and it provided a lot of grounding for moving into the main section of his show.
The core of Glenn’s show is about organised religion. Comparisons between Islam and “Canada-ism” and the absurdity of governmental attitudes to drugs and religions were fantastic. Everything was delivered with a devilish smile and a willingness to push at the boundaries of what can be used for material. His material is extremely clever, some of it requiring quite a bit of thought to process fully, but delivered with such glee and passion that the audience was entertained even when they missed a joke or two.
You can see a lot of the influence of Bill Hicks in both the material and the attitude of the performance. This show is guided by a much friendlier anger though—Bill’s intimidating style is replaced be a cheeky schoolboy grin that constantly poked it’s way through Glenn’s moustache.
There are a lot of very subtle (and not so subtle) things going on in this show that you will no doubt be thinking and talking about well after he’s left the stage. Make sure you get a seat up close to experience the full glory of Glenn Wool.
For booking details see Glenn Wool – Where is Hell?