Tartan About

If Craig Hill’s monumental comic talent gets any bigger, he’ll have to change his name to Craig Mountain. Hill is the flamboyantly gay comic who makes straights deliriously happy. Maybe it’s the natural charm, or the delivery, or the fact that he’s just plain bloody funny, but the straight audience adores him as much as his gay following. While Hill can cut down audience members – or even just banter bitchily with them, there is a puppy dog “please like me” appeal which is neither confrontational nor threatening sexually. Indeed, after Hill’s flirtatious and sexually overt routine with a young straight male audience member last night, one couldn’t help but feel the young man might indeed succumb if his Mum hadn’t been with him. I myself was a target for much of the show but there was no embarrassment or unease…even after I confessed to living in Frankston.

Hill’s material ranges from the clean and clever, through the risque and naughty and lands fair and square in deep purple filth! That’s the nature of comedy in the 21^st century. The advantage Hill has over other comics is that he’s genuinely funny…all the time. He’s also a triple threat; an excellent dancer with a great singing voice. Thus sexual routines on “dogging” and “seagulling” are balanced with hilarious snippets of Whitney Houston doing her “loud/soft” vocalising – to Britney Spears being totally incomprehensible. There’s even an audience participation segment where Hill tries to teach a straight middle-aged man to dance like “a faggot.” Self deprecating and politically incorrect, Hill manages to turn our secret prejudices against himself and dispel them in the process. Craig Hill has been “coming down under’ (he’d make a whole routine out of that) for some years now and it’s always a delight to see the new material he has added along with some favourite “bits”. Easily one of the must-see attractions at the Melbourne International Comedy festival; if Hill doesn’t make you laugh you need emergency surgery…for a sense of humour transplant.

Coral Drouyn