Review by Steve Bennett

Well, that’s Jeff Kreisler’s problem. He decided we were a poor audience after the third joke, like the first and the second, didn’t get the reaction he wanted. In truth, he’d done nothing to prove his abilities other than suggest what famous people he looked like, but still it was our fault – and he kept telling us throughout the show.

He doesn’t seem to have taken the gear change from rowdy clubs to polite 6pm festival crowds very well at all. We’re patient, happy to hear him out, but aren’t going to laugh just because we’re a bit drunk and eager for a raucous night out – but he wants more than that.

Kreisler doesn’t make it easy for us to like him either, with deliberately obscure references to American politics. He makes a gag about an Uncle Tom, for instance, then realises we have no clue who he’s talking about. He explains he means Clarence Thomas and moves on, neglecting to tell us that Mr Thomas is a conservative Supreme Court judge. I still haven’t found the news story that explains the joke.

He paints himself as a political comic, but his philosophising is like a teenager who thinks he’s stumbled on universal truths for the first time, whereas in reality he’s nowhere near as insightful as he thinks he is. America’s too materialistic and too religious, is the upshot of it. And personal insecurity is good for the economy, as we buy more stuff we don’t need. It’s hard to see why this superficial stuff won him an award for encapsulating the spirit of Bill Hicks, when it’s really a much less focussed version of the original.

His arguments are inconsistent, too. At one point he says that George Bush’s supposed stupidity is only an act (and what better excuse to wheel out more hacky ‘Bush says dumb things’ material); the next he’s calling him a ‘borderline retard’ for a cheap laugh. Another time he says there’s not such thing as blue states and red states with die-hard political opinions, later he parodies a weatherman, implying people on the coast are enlightened liberals and those in the centre are idiot conservative rednecks. Make your mind up, Jeff.

There are a few good lines, and he has got a certain stage presence, despite his tetchiness with a perfectly attentive audience. But ultimately, he makes little attempt to engage with us, keeps his material parochial and espouses contradictory points of view – and when we don’t like it, it’s our fault. Is it any wonder Americans have a reputation for arrogance?

Reviewed by: Steve Bennett

Review date: 1 Jan 2008
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett