As with all his shows, every night with Ross Noble for Nonsensory Overload is unique, so I can feel free to spoilerise it with abandon, knowing that it might otherwise be lost like a snowflake in the sun. For example, Tuesday’s show featured Larry Emdur, naked, riding a bear with Simon Cowell draped around his shoulders, fighting Stephen Hawking and a bogan who keeps screaming about ‘stras’ (strasbourg). Also Angelina Jolie playing Phar Lap and getting a testicle stuck in a novelty soap in the shape of a vacuum cleaner. It is all, as Noble says, “Hilarious and very wrong – like having sex with a clown”.
While Nonsensory Overload was part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, it’s actually more of a fringe event; it’s miles away from anything at the Town Hall, and runs for two hours rather than the more conventional one. Essentially, it’s a night out at Ross Noble rather than a night out at the Comedy Festival. It’s also worth pointing out that we can probably take ‘International’ off Noble’s MICF profile: he might be living in the UK, but once someone has an official opinion on the parking system at Doncaster Shoppingtown, it’s probably fair to claim them as a local.
There’s a hell of a lot of comedy in these two hours, and Noble’s stamina at being funny for extended periods is impressive. Aside from the usual filth, which might not be suitable for a young audience, and the mental imagery, which isn’t suitable for any audience, there’s also a lot of material on the subject of small children, since Noble now has a human child. Noble’s inner monologue leads him more than once onto comedically thin ice (as he puts it, “You might have noticed that things just come out of my face, and then I go… uuuuuh…”) but luckily, he has his comedy arse-saving routine down pat: take the opportunity to lampoon his audience’s underwhelmed reaction.
Nonsensory Overload is a big show. Ross is surrounded by inflatable in-jokes from previous shows, dressed in a sort of ninja-slash-pyjama outfit, and has his own AV mobile-phone-latecomer-video-recording presentation. There are showbags and programmes that you can buy for a tenner. (I did not buy one, and so I cannot tell you who worked on this rather epic production; feel free to imagine your own name under ‘Stage Manager’ or ‘Wrangler Of Giant Inflatable Bum-Faced Children’.)
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Ross Noble: Nonsensory Overload
Palais Theatre
April 16 – 22
Melbourne International Comedy Festival
March 28 – April 22
