Ross Noble’s stand-up might seem random and unpredictable, but the one thing you can always be sure of is his ability to read a room and tailor his shows for different audiences.
Touring his new show Humournoid across Australia, Noble is making a stop in at Melbourne’s International Comedy Festival for two nights only. As always with Noble’s style of comedy, there will be an assortment of topics covered that change each night, depending on his mood and the audience’s.
“They don’t have a theme, the shows. The theme is anything, it’s their randomness,” he says. “I jump around as well, I talk about one thing then I’ll jump into the next and then backwards and forwards. It’s basically just like a comedy pinball machine.” he says of his unpredictable and free-form style of stand-up.
Picking out a name to encompass the changeable nature of his shows is also essential to Noble, allowing him the freedom to move from topic to topic.
“So the show’s called Humournoid ‘coz I just thought it sounds like a creature that was some sort of comedy specific lifeform that is basically like,” he pauses for a moment and sighs, “ah it sounds so pretentious. It’s just a cool name you know and, to be honest, it sounds a bit like haemorrhoid. So I just said it and thought ‘oh that sounds cool’.”
If audiences want to know about his style of stand-up, they need only look at the hours of footage available online. Still, he acknowledges there’s an energy in his live shows that you can’t get from a recording. The comedian, who is known for his improvisation and high energy, likes to change it up from show to show, considering the little differences in his audiences each night.
“The best way to describe them [is as] a real sort of live experience. Some people just sit down and write a show and do that show word for word every night and are not really taking into account the energy in the room,” he explains.
“You’ve got to adjust it all the time, not just between countries, that’s night after night. If you’re listening to the audience you sometimes notice high energy, sometimes you’ll have an audience that’s kind of low energy. Sometimes crowds will go for certain things but won’t go for others,” He adds.
It’s apparent that Noble takes pride in his ability to read an audience and adapt his shows to suit their moods and needs. “That’s the beauty of stand-up,” he muses. “It’s not like a film where you go and see a carbon copy.”
This passion for malleability is truly the allure for fans of Ross Noble, you never really know what you’ll get from each live show.
By Eliza Booth
Ross Noble comes to the Palais Theatre for two dates on Friday March 29 and Saturday March 30. Grab your tickets via the Melbourne International Comedy Festival website.
