It won’t come as a surprise to Rhod Gilbert afficionados (Gilbertados, as they are known) that it hasn’t been a good year for the comic. After his 08 Fringe show, he was accused by the critics of focusing on daily annoyances at the expense of weighty issues (“The Scotsman said my material was ‘unremittingly trivial’. Pot fucking kettle, Scotsman. I’m not the one devoting 48 pages to Scotland every day.”); his mother and girlfriend seemingly agreed with the critics; there’s also something about a cat; and it doesn’t seem that he’s mastered the science behind duvet design yet either.
Gilbert is a superbly funny performer: his ability to express the frustrations of daily life are second to none and, as far as this critic is concerned at least, I couldn’t care less that his material doesn’t major on Proportional Representation or the Suez Crisis.
I didn’t love the set wholeheartedly: after a while his tone (which runs the gamut from indignant right the way to righteous indignation) can become wearing and the attempt to wrap the set into one coherent motif (the business around the cat) feels forced. But despite these minor complaints Gilbert comes across as likeable, self-deprecating, modest and extremely funny.
I saw Rhod Gilbert and the Cat That Looked Like Nicholas Lyndhurst earlier this week. I thought overall the show was great though I do agree that toward the end some of the attempts to tie things together did seem a little forced. Possibly the best part of the night was during the encore when he was asked to do the Ryan Air sketch which of course he couldn't without the prop but he did some very good imrpov around that sketch.