The Red Richardson Experience | Review by Julia Chamberlain
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The Red Richardson Experience

Note: This review is from 2016

Review by Julia Chamberlain

Two years into his stand-up career, Red Richardson has a late-night show in the early afternoon.

And he is quite the presence. With his sonorous voice and glowering persona, he sounds like a gravelly Jack Dee, with similar aptitude for joie de vivre. He’s a mixture of innocence and experience – his contempt for his own generation and privilege belongs to an older, more embittered man, but he’s thin-skinned about an old review and scans the audience, fixating on the people who are not smiling.

OK, some of us do have bitchy resting faces, but that’s not a comment on the show and a word of advice, dear Red, if you pick on one audience member, it momentarily alienates the others, if said audience member hasn’t been a dick.

On a Sunday afternoon, most of the audience were in kinks laughing, me included, and a handful felt it wasn’t for them and snuck off. He will get that because he’s opinionated, boiling with self-loathing and not doing bland, easy, lowest common denominator guff.

It’s early days for him and his audience will find him, in time, the become slavishly devoted. He has fabulous turns of phrase and mixes punching upward (Hollywood’s diversity problems, privileged white youth, parents) with prurient vulgarity that’s not my cup of tea, but every time he rescued what threatened to become crass with a superb switch.

Even when he goes over a well-used subject like bratty Jesus, he provides a classy end to the routine that lifts it out of the ordinary. Once he has the confidence to refine the shock content, there will be no holding him.

He has some assured, hilarious writing that wins out over the grosser elements and his tetchy vulnerability is endearing. Like the best things in life, he’s not for everyone, but get on the Red bus and congratulate yourself on having seen him before he has to get punched on YouTube to ignite his career.

Review date: 8 Aug 2016
Reviewed by: Julia Chamberlain
Reviewed at: Laughing Horse @ The Counting House

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