hitting
funny
REVIEWS
The
Scotsman
****
Philip Ralph's one-man performance as a comedian on the edge proves
a dark, scathing and scatological treat.
From a distance of two decades, the phenomenon of "alternative comedy"
seems almost quaint. The idea that young comedians, furious with the
Thatcher regime, might somehow galvanise Britain's youth into activism
looks tragically wan now. The more so in the fevered context of the
Fringe, where most comedians seem focused on such heady goals as casual
sex and a lucrative television deal.
On the face of it, Philip Ralph's angry one-man play - which he performs
in the persona of comedian Chris Rich - is a critique of the "selling
out" of stand-up comedy. These days, it suggests, stand-up is simply
a strand of the Blairite consensus, too comfortable to risk the radicalism
embraced by the likes of Lenny Bruce and Bill Hicks.
It begins as a very funny pastiche of a contemporary stand-up routine
called 'Things I Don't Understand'. The routine's central theme is sex;
and it soon becomes clear that Ralph is taking issue with its prevalence
in public life and the media: "Not sex you can have; sex you can look
at".
But this is also a play steeped in pathological self-loathing. The ironically
named Rich has come to recognize his own worthlessness. Yet the one
thing that alleviates his self-disgust is a club full of laughing people,
so the show must go on, and his bile must keep spilling out. Be warned:
Ralph is articulating profound revulsion towards a culture that ignores
harsh truths in favour of trivia, and it expresses itself in sexual
and scatological material of escalating foulness.
As he veers towards breakdown, Rich distracts himself with a history
of comedy, from an ape discovering the humorous possibilities of banana
skins, via Jesus, Hitler and Hicks to the fluff-purveyors of today.
Ralph doesn't stop there. His philosophical excavation digs ruthlessly
deeper to explore what kind of conformity "selling in" might imply in
the first place.
This is as dark and biting a dissection of comedy as you're likely to
find at the Fringe; all the more disturbing for Ralph's desperado portrayal
of a man tormented by his own reason for living.
Andrew Burnet
The Stage
17
Aug 2005
It is amazing how an audience develops preconceptions when presented
with an easily identifiable character. In Hitting Funny, Philip Ralph
is onstage in a suit, red shirt and trainers, mumbling reasonably witty
observations into a mic. He looks like the stand-up comic his character
Chris Rich is supposed to be.
The audience chuckles at what he is saying, responding to his appearance,
but they are not really listening or attempting to read his body language.
His delivery is intense, bitter and angry. When he lifts his head up
to look at the audience, he has a threatening look.
Volcano's Hitting Funny is a physical and disturbing investigation into
shattered dreams. In his raw, faultless performance, Ralph is angry
that the political, anti-Thatcher, alternative comedians of the early
eighties, whom he worshipped as a teenager, never changed a thing.
His anger is palpable, oozing from the stage as his character tackles,
sex, paedophilia, the war on terror and all the other stock stand-up
subjects. Sex is predominate. The West's obsession with sex and materialism
at the expense of knowledge, intellect and social justice, have ushered
in Al Qaeda and who can blame the terrorists for hating us, he asks.
Powerful, challenging, unmissable.
Jeremy Austin
Three
Weeks
12 August 05
****
Philip
Ralph is a wonderful performer. A mixture of sweat, guts and pure talent
make this one-man show as entertaining as it is thought provoking. A
stand up comic, Chris Rich, bombards us with his latest material, his
current thoughts and a variety of seemingly random observations. The
character seems to struggle to cope with the pressure of an audience,
speeding between a variety of observations and comments, and pushing
the boundaries of what humour is acceptable. But there is method in
his madness, and intelligence behind the comedy. Sometimes filthy, often
funny and sometimes simply uncomfortable, 'Hitting Funny' makes you
see the art of comedy in a whole new light. A refreshingly thoughtful
piece delivered with style and wit. [Ria Parry]
Rating 4/5
The List
11-18 August 05
****
A serious look at stand-up that's very funny
Under the guise of Chris Rich, a provocative, filthy comedian whose
career is in nosedive, writer/performer and RADA-trained actor Philip
Ralph doesn't so much deconstruct the art of stand-up as explode it.
Ralph tests the very limits of funny, pushing routines beyond PC and
and otherwise over the edge into... well, not at all funny. One skit
in Rich's routine (which is titled Things I Don't Understand) begins
with questions about the voyeuristic national male psyche, as evidenced
in a display of various lads' mags, and ends up a dead end with an uncomfortable
discussion about paedophiles.
Having provided examples of what's funny and what's not (in the observational,
political and lavatorial modes), Ralph proceeds to perform (in mime,
sort of) the evolution of comedy from ape to millennium man. That utterly
demented routine is probably far funnier than much of what you'll see
on the stand-up circuit in Edinburgh this month. If there's one criticism
of Hitting Funny, it's that in the manic whirl of the show it's
not always easy to catch Ralph's points. But the notion that what the
we the audience of the consumer generation wants from comedy is to be
merely entertained comes through loud and clear.
Miles Fielder
Metro
August 9, 2005
***
It's
a very odd show, Hitting Funny - a quest for simple meaning in life
dressed up as theatre and then pretending to be a stand-up show - but
you kind of get the gist when the only character, who had apparently
been soundchecking as we filed in, wraps himself around the mic for
a full five minutes of bog-standard pier-end stand-up without once raising
his eyes to the audience.
Of course, this isn't the real Chris Rich. Or rather, Chris Rich isn't
even the real Chris Rich - he's the desperate jobbing stand-up through
which the show conveys its ideas, the by turns pitiable, hateable and
sage-like alter ego of the play's actor and writer Philip Ralph.
He softens us up with a few light gags to test the water, then barrels
into purposefully uncomfortable routines about coprophilia and paedophilia.
Is this meant to be funny? Rich doesn't know and that's what he keeps
asking.
Riffing ferociously on the origin of comedy (a brilliant mime of a caveman
slipping on a banana) and, again, musing
with wilful disagreeability on Jesus Christ and Adolf Hitler as history's
greatest stand-ups, the answer doesn't come easily.
But in there somewhere is the faint hope that comedy can be a vehicle
for positive thought, rather than society's light entertainment placebo.
David Pollock
The
Western Mail
April 29, 2005
If there's a racing certainty about
Volcano Theatre, it's that you can never be sure what will come next.
The last show was a reality-tv influenced take on Romeo and Juliet,
without the sub-plots and, indeed, without the romance, which some critics
hated and most audiences loved. Now they have a one-man show about stand-up
comedy, which I suspect most critics will love and some audiences at
least will hate - at a recent gig there were 35 walk-outs.
To
call Hitting Funny a show about stand-up comedy barely hints at what
Philip Ralph achieves in 75 minutes or so of non-stop monologue. Basically
it's a lament for the power of the comic as political subversive - but
that's just for starters. On the surface it's an aggressive, offensive
comedy turn that leaves few stones unturned in its attempt to shock
and make you laugh, initially like early Ben Elton on speed or a quick-fire
foul-mouthed Jeremy Hardy lacking any redeeming qualities of likeability
or ideological commitment.
But that is Chris Rich, the man who greets us as we take our seats,
mumbling head-down wearing a red nose, a man who rants about pornography,
the carnal weakness of men and the unsexiness of female tattoos, piercings,
fat midriffs and thongs. Or rather, it's the on-stage persona of comedian
Chris Rich, while Chris Rich is the character created by actor Philip
Ralph (and that's probably an alias anyway)…
Confused ? Well, while there may seem to have been little consistency
to Volcano shows there is one common concern: identity, the question
of where the performer stops and the character takes over, and whether
what you see is what you get - the manifestations of what's called the
postmodern condition - and Hitting Funny explores just that.
Well, to an extent. What it is more concerned with is the role of comedy
(another ongoing Volcano issue) in an age where Marx's old adage about
history repeating itself first as tragedy and then as farce appeals
to many a left-leaning performer. Philip Ralph here invokes the spirits
of the likes of Lenny Bruce and Bill Hicks, those controversial American
stand-ups who changed the face of comedy by outraging audiences.
What Ralph does is confuse, confront and confound us as to whether what
he (as Chris Rich or as Rich's performing alter-ego) is doing is for
real or pastiche as his jokes get ever more extreme, questioning just
where we draw the line - in this case, it's just after coprophilia,
with a torrent of graphic descriptions that simultaneously repulse and
make you laugh (maybe), the climax of an exhausting line on the bizarre
nature of human sexuality.
Nothing is sacred. Christianity, terrorism, paedophilia, auto-eroticism,
all are used as subjects for comedy, and we have to ask whether we laugh
because it actually is funny or because a taboo subject treated with
irreverence makes us laugh. Underlying all this is the ultimate conundrum:
what is the relation between comedy and politics and is the lack of
a latter-day Lenny Bruce another sign that we have lost the battle against
hegemonic conformity ? Have we, like stand-up comics, sold out or bought
in ?
Ralph asks uncomfortable, difficult questions in a play (and, we have
to remind ourselves, that's what it is) that is intelligent, startling
and one of the best things Volcano has produced. His performance, under
Paul Davies's direction, is superb as he manages to be both a wildly
anarchically funny stand-up comic and offer a critique of contemporary
comedy. Brilliant.
David Adams
