Rhod Gilbert and the Cat That Looked Like Nicholas Lyndhurst

You’d think that it would have been a happy year for Rhod Gilbert, who has graced every major stage TV stand-up has to offer following the immense success of his 2008 show Rhod Gilbert and the Award Winning Mince Pie. But a sell out national tour and appearances on Live at the Apollo, Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow and the Royal Variety Performance apparently haven’t made up for what has been another period dominated by impotent rage at life’s little challenges.

…Award Winning Mince Pie marked a sea change in Gilbert’s performance style, which became suddenly pumped with adrenaline and fast talking wrath. Last year’s anger at the apparently over-complicated process of buying a duvet—put it this way, he’s not a fan of the tog rating system—and hyperbolic marketing spiels attracted an if.comedy nomination, in spite of some accusations of melodrama from the press.

It is a reaction against these same ill-conceived reviews that begins 2009’s tale of rejection, bitterness and depression. Barnstorming onto stage, Gilbert almost instantly enters one of his characteristic rants, taking advantage of his slightly tipsy evening slot. Perhaps because his duvet is getting a bit grubby now, the targets of 2009’s lengthy showers of vitriol are, bizarrely, washing machines and Hoovers. Gilbert is the past master of such observational comedy on the microscopically petty scale and, with his audience feeling like they’ve got their money’s worth only five minutes in, an atmosphere that could only have been forged by the simultaneously bitter and coquettish Welshman envelopes the room. 

With such a tightly written and intensely hilarious style of comedy, Gilbert does well to provide pathos to balance his loquacious flare-ups. Lengthy epistles about such important issues as wall-mounted vacuum cleaners seem dauntingly distant from the main drive of the plot but are linked expertly back to his main purpose. Culminating in a masterclass on the comic device of the call-back, the audience is rendered almost silent thanks to the suffocating effects of his rapid fire shtick.

Sadly, success at this year’s Fringe may mark the last full August run for 2009’s Pleasance headliner – a man who doesn’t mind saying how stressful he finds the Edinburgh experience. A return next year for a limited time in an over-sized venue would be regrettable not least because Gilbert’s personal stories and complex humour have much more power in an intimate space. Nonetheless,  …The Cat That Looked Like Nicholas Lyndhurst offers everything of Gilbert’s previous show but tweaked and perfected, as is to be expected from a comedian who is somewhat of a micromanager. Much has been made of his near miss in last year’s Fringe awards. With a show like this, there should be no miss about it in 2009.