New York’s finest finds the fun
“the hardest working middleaged man in showbusiness” and his chops are beyond question: it might seem as if he’s worked his way down from the Catskills, but his expert line in barbed bonhomie has been refined over two decades hosting burlesque shows, bingo and Oscar-themed specials in Manhattan and Brooklyn. This is Hill’s overdue Fringe debut and it’s a treat.
About To Break is less a scripted set than an hour of Hill riffing on his wayward career, love life, gender expression (“Is it a man or a woman? The answer is no”) and, most of all, the audience. Whatever the subject, Hill is keen to connect with those in the room on common ground, articulating the nature of Spanx underwear in relation to haggis manufacture or taking a deep dive into the vexed question of whether a Tunnock’s teacake is a biscuit.
A gameshow segment involving audience members proves a goldmine for impromptu gags that perfectly navigate the tightrope of ragging without belittling.
Indeed, Hill manages just the right balance throughout of finding fun in local differences and the peculiarities of those in the room – and the physical room itself – while always playing friendly. Neat tricks like swerving the mic away from his mouth just before his most scathing asides are balanced by a wide streak of self-deprecation and clowning at his own expense, leaving no doubt that in Hill’s world, we’re all in on the joke. Showbiz!
BEN WALTERS
0 With two decades compering across Brooklyn and Manhattan, Murray Hill’s fringe debut is long overdue Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33) JJJ
The new production by Ad Infinitum (Translunar Paradise, Ballad of the Burning Star) is a two-hander from artistic directors Nir Paldi and George Mann, an offstage gay couple exploring on stage the genuine question of whether they should pursue parenthood. It’s an engaging, energetic and thoughtful piece that usefully questions the pervasive but possibly harmful idea that having children is the natural and noble thing to do, and the pressures and assumptions that come with it.
Paldi and Mann play themselves and other real and imagined roles – and regularly break into Madonnathemed numbers – as they explore various related matters, including a miraculous conception, adoption and its intrusive process, surrogacy and its complex geopolitics and the pernicious effects of homophobia in public and in the home.
Yet, for all its questioning, No Kids is surprisingly conservative. “Straight people don’t own parenthood,” Paldi insists, but even as the show exposes some of the limitations of normative family life, it never imagines any alternatives, remaining unquestioningly wedded to the default model of monogamous, nuclear domesticity. Nor, for that matter, does it admit that the new arrival might be LGBTQ itself – it’s easier, apparently, to conceive of a Nobel prizewinner or a second Hitler than a queer child. BEN WALTERS
Until 27 August. Today 3:40pm.