Review – Craig Hill: Tartan About

Craig delivers a high-energy highland fling of a performance. You wonder where this Scottish laddie gets his energy from, considering that Coca Cola is not their top soft drink. Caffeine deficit aside, he gets into some serious dance routines early on with his kilt jiggling to and fro. His gestures and voice continue Irn-Bru strong throughout, and at the end you know he could’ve kept going for three more hours, it’s his solid nature.

My pre show expectations about his comic plans were thrown out within minutes as Craig engaged with the audience. He found one member, who even he thought was comedy gold. She was Coral, a reviewer herself, who was full of great stories which Hill dissected one comical exchange after another. Other spectators were also sized up for their humorous potential, a 17 year old called Ryan and a Scottish lass, turned Aussie girl were equally mined for comical nuggets. So my initial thoughts of Hill holding a tighter script were replaced by curious thoughts about what would come next and where was this all this going.

He had some ‘aff yer heid’ with laughter moments, as the Scots would say, when he mimicked the singing of well-known divas and speculated about their singing strategies. He also educated us some more about the different Scottish regional dialects, making particular fun of the way one town was unable to facially express excitement. He then shifted his observational powers to us Melburnians, selecting some from the audience and then crowd polling whether they were from a minted suburb not. Frankston again seems comes under fire for being the latter of the two. Suburb stereotyping is a cheeky and overdone comedic them, yet he was still able to make the stories his own using personal commentary.

He also brandished personal tails from his Scottish day-to-day experiences, which were both quaint and amusing. This comedy was specifically hidden in his story set ups, which he swiped with funny reactions near the end.

All in all a bonnie performance, but one where you must unstrap your pre conceived seat belt and enjoy the ride. That said 18 year olds and younger should stick to another show, as there is some elicit material when Hill mines the Loch ness of his meandering mind for dirty laundry.