The first thing you’ll notice when arriving at “Rhod Gilbert’s”:Rhod+Gilbert:comic festival show “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” is his “Heaven Set” which basically involves a home made cardboard cut out of Jesus and a holiness meter. The premise of the show is that the entire audience has died and we are all in the waiting room for heaven. Rhod then goes through an application form outlining the criteria for getting into heaven. Going by his list, not many people are getting into heaven, I’m certainly not, I think I failed every section of the application form.
Rhod introduces the show backstage in the guise of St Peter. He then bursts onto stage and starts the show proper. There are a few really good early jibes at his native Wales. However some of the extended material about the nature of Australian’s and the differences between Wales and Aus worked well enough as a warm up and a crowd pleaser but it often dipped into the well of standard banter, offering no real surprises. He is, though, a genuinely charismatic performer and this tends to cover for flaws in the material and several moments do see him delve into surreal and absurd material which seems to suit him so well.
Rhod really comes into his own when he is riffing with audience members. He gets the audience on board from the outset, eliciting a vocal response from his Melbourne audience (which is saying something, Melbourne audiences tend to be quite shy). The bulk of the show involves this kind of banter and Rhod’s improvisational skills come to the fore here. Of particular note are those moments (and we’ve all seen them) when an audience member, asked a simple question, tries to be clever or funny in answering that question (often embarrassingly). Every single time Rhod displayed his prowess by just being genuinely funnier and genuinely cleverer than any of the impresarios in the audience. There is no doubt who’s running this ship.
This show is topped and tailed by theatrical aspects which, although they have some great moments and obviously work as constructs to contain the show, are not as effective as his free form material. That being said, this show is moment for moment full of comic value. Rhod is charismatic, very funny and completely worth taking the time to check out.
Rhod Gilbert will be performing from Tuesday to Sunday until the 29th of April. For bbooking details go to the Comedy Festival website