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Charlie Pickering Betterman Rhino Room until Sat 18 March Attempts at self-improvement could be an intriguing enough concept for a stand-up show, but Pickering's development of it is uneven and frankly not as interesting as the event that led him to it (an entire day spent filling up e-mail accounts in the names of Muhammad Ali and George Foreman). As I've never thought a strong theme was an absolute necessity for quality comedy I can forgive this, but neither is Pickering's material anything special. Some jokes are poorly told, some are just plain unfunny. In between gags about gym membership, religion and well-endowed whales, Pickering shows a series of rather baffling cartoons set to the strains of 'Betterman' as performed by Pearl Jam, John Butler and Robbie Williams. They don't appear to contribute much to the overall show, and nor does the advertisement for 'the CP Trouser Solution' (a Velcro belt, basically), but the latter stands out as being genuinely hilarious and just about worth the price of admission. What disappoints me most about Charlie Pickering is that he shows some considerable promise. When he's really funny, he's really funny, and he shows this off best when he improvises; his lengthy impersonation of Osama bin Laden, which Pickering admits is him "improvising himself into a corner", is a piece he can be very proud of. Mostly though this is a show for the undemanding, apart from the aforementioned Trouser Solution.  |
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