Rich Hall

Best known on these shores as a deadpan and mostly taciturn presence on a million and one British panel shows, Rich Hall has been coming to the Fringe for years and sharing his idiosyncratic worldview with a dedicated hardcore of followers, as well as a bunch of people who want to know what he gets up to when he's not mumbling something cryptically obscure to Stephen Fry. He's necessarily a much more verbose character on stage, but still has a certain reluctant, morose style of delivery that gives a nihilistic edge to his idiosyncratic mix of whimsy, political satire and caustic audience interaction.

Dressed in an embroidered, cowboy-like black jacket and tight jeans, Hall is every inch the American but he succeeds where many other US comics fail in adapting his material so that Brits can get fully involved. When he talks of a strange encounter with a lone weirdo on a Montana mountainside, he does so with the cockeyed perspective of an outsider; and when he turns his gaze on us, talking of his English wife's concern for the suffering of animals and her contention that "misery should be reserved for human beings", the insight is hilariously piercing.

Hall is never afraid to interrupt his set for a bit of combative audience banter and he builds a palpable rapport, so that his pessimistic worldview never gets in the way of us having a good time. As with all the best comedy, there is a sense of optimism and even elation in the crowd by the end of the show: it's probably the classiest US act you can see at the Fringe this year.