Rich Hall: Fifty Cent Words ***

On the way in I experienced my first wee bit of Fringe ticket chaos.

I headed along to Assembly to see what I could see and realised as soon as I sat down with my drink, that Rich Hall was starting in 15 minutes.

Excellent I thought! I had previously tried to buy tickets for his other show (the one where he plays his comic charachter "Otis Lee Crenshaw") but that was sold out.

So I headed along to the box office thinking that 15 minutes was plenty of time.

It wasn't.

To be fair to the management, they were out there in numbers keeping everyone informed, but employing 16 year old's who have never worked with a till before is not going do do anything positive to the speed of the transactions.

About a minute before the show was due to start, they saw sense and let everyone who was going to see Rich Hall go to the front of teh queue, but I still ended up being late.

Anyway, on to the show....

Rich Hall is a very charming and captivating entertainer. In this show he was sharing some of the stories he had written, one long one about his childhood, one about a trip to Aberdeen and one about his teenaged daughter's uncanny ability to get into trouble.

One of the stories was a bit long, but other than that it was an entertaining hour.

I do sometimes feel a little bit cheated when I turn up from a show and someone is just reading from a bit of paper. I didn't really research the show, so I guess I could have found out beforehand that he was just reading stories and made a more informed decision about whether or not to pay £12, but I didn't so I can't complain if that's what the show is advertised as.

If you're a big fan of Rich Hall this is a must see, but if you're not, you'll won't be hard pushed to get better value for your £12 elsewhere.

Rich Hall is on at Assembly at 13.05 daily.

His other show (which I reckon will be better) is on at the Pleasance at 21.20

3/5

http://www.edfringe.com/shows/detail.php?action=shows&id=183

http://www.edfringe.com/shows/detail.php?action=shows&id=988