Review by Steve Bennett

Baby-faced Rob Deering, armed yet again with his trusty Fender guitar, has developed an entertaining hour of decent audience participation and some well-executed, if mildly uninspiring, film-related material that sits uncomfortably between being a concept show and straight stand-up.

It is hard to decipher Deering's on-stage persona. His arrogance is exaggerated to the level of parody, repeatedly winking at audience members and stating his own name in a classic film trailer voice, creating a difficult character to engage with. Perhaps he would argue that this is part of the character for the show's theme ­ producing the James Bond-esque movie of Rob Deering ­ yet he still adopts this stance when digressing about Lord Of The Rings or Busted's new album.

Saying this, however, the concept of the hour is fantastic, even if annoyingly diluted with pop-culture material and musical parodies that are solid and entertaining, yet irrelevant. In a sequence in which Deering appears as his own evil twin and rigs explosives to the Fender set to detonate if it is played above 50mph, the comic shows a huge amount of imaginative promise and hints at how good this show could have been.

He uses his own physicality heavily, a wise move as his facial expressions and body movements add much to the material.

The other considerable talent that Deering expresses is for audience participation, establishing several idiosyncrasies throughout the crowd that he refers to throughout. He also involves a couple of people more heavily, using one chap in the front row as a villain in a train chase and one woman as a love interest for the loose framework of the film, creating a lot of more fun, if slightly chaotic, moments in the show.

If Deering had followed through with the show's concept, rather than litter moments of normal material between, then he would have clearly presented a comedic tour-de-force for the festival. However, as it stands, this is an entertaining, yet slightly stumbling hour that falls short of expectation.

Review date: 1 Jan 2004
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett