Review: Hal Cruttenden’s Funny Fundraiser

I spoke to Hal Cruttenden in advance to his performance, and was really excited having been promised a fantastic night with four different comedians. It did not disappoint in the slightest. I arrived at the Arts Centre studio to find it mostly empty – there couldn’t have been more than thirty people there, leading to Hal inviting everyone to sit at the front when he came on stage. It was an upsetting start, especially considering that the event was a charity fundraiser, but that did not set the tone for the evening – indeed, Hal made great light of it.

As our compere for the night, Hal came on first to warm everyone up – he started chatting and joking with the audience, including advising a young aspiring actress to not bother wasting her time and talking about his marriage and wife with a couple who’d been to see him before. It was an accomplished routine, and had the audience in hysterics before Hal introduced the next comic.

he recited a beautifully crude ode to the elderly having sex

Our first stand-up of the night was French comic Marcel Lucont (played by Warwick alumnus Alexis Dubus), who very dryly reflected that he was there to ‘provide an exciting and dynamic start to the evening.’ He mused on the differences between the French and the English, especially in regards to our nation’s differing responses to festivals. After asking us to vote on which poem to read, he recited a beautifully crude ode to the elderly having sex (‘truly the choice of an arts centre crowd’) and left, telling us that it had ‘truly been an honour… for you to see me.’

Lucont was followed by Ian D. Montfort (played by Tom Binns), a Sunderland psychic who set out to amaze the audience with his clairvoyant gift. After a couple of incredibly specific readings, D. Montfort indicated that he was being stifled by a negative energy in the room – this, it transpired, was me. He invited me on-stage, eager to remove my scepticism, giving me a tarot card reading with worrying indications for my future. (‘The Death card may mean change,’ he told me. ‘For instance, you’re alive today…’) His act culminated with a demonstration – enlisting the help of a member of the audience, he predicted a random word from a book in a display that was both as funny as it was impressive, and it ended the first act on a high.

He invited me on-stage, eager to remove my scepticism

To kick off the second half, Hal invited Rachel Binns, the director of Thare Machi Education on-stage to discuss the work of the charity. It was awe-inspiring to hear about the reach and the impact of their work. They have more than 800 DVDs in 57 different languages proving the level of their success. If anyone is a clear testament to the power of education in helping to fight disease, it’s them.

When Rachel left, Hal came back and performed a little more, discussing his irritations with Facebook and people who milk personal tragedy for likes. He related his frustrations over being a middle-aged orphan and how he wants to be so successful, he gets to do the sad stuff on Comic Relief (‘although that joke may not be the most fitting tonight,’ he mused).

A brilliant show all around and if it returns, you have no excuse not to attend

The final act of the night was Terry Alderton, who came on talking about having to play his own entrance music and devolved in further surrealism from there. His act, as he described it involved ‘spurting stuff’ at the audience, with him talking to himself adding in the occasional musical interludes, extolling the virtues of chicken pole vaulting and showing us how he would’ve ended The Shawshank Redemption. Needless to say, this was absurd and hilarious, with this kind of rapid-fire nonsense being exactly my sort of thing. He finished by taking the stage apart, leaving with everything he could carry to rapturous applause.

It was truly a shame that such few people came, but the added intimacy of a small audience helped make the evening with everyone getting involved and enjoying themselves. It was an excellent evening, with four incredibly different but funny stand-ups and the warmth of knowing that you had supported a fantastic cause by attending. A brilliant show all around and if it returns, you have no excuse not to attend.