After eight years playing effervescent luvvie Anna Mann and more than a decade of sketch work before that, this is Colin Hoult’s first Fringe show as himself. However, the generous, gregarious spirit of theatre’s grand dame still infuses his gushing ‘I love it!’ crowd work with which he opens the hour.
When he killed off Anna in his last show, Hoult revealed his ADHD diagnosis, and that condition is writ large in this show with its endless diversions and false starts. He sets up his core story: ‘1986. Christmas Day. Nottingham’ at the beginning, and only actually gets to it in the last few minutes, despite repeating that set-up line multiple times. However, the scattergun approach is a veritable asset, giving the show a scintillatingly unpredictable path.
Through the myriad sidebar anecdotes, we get to meet his very eccentric family, starting with Mum and her peculiar catchphrases. His two brothers have their idiosyncrasies too while non-nonsense dad, Big Colin, offers relative stability (and quite a few farts).
With a lifetime to observe them and finely-honed performance skills, Hoult brings them all to life brilliantly, inviting us to laugh at their hilarious foibles, but in an affectionate way. And the biggest oddball of the lot is himself, as his remarkably patient wife will attest.
He grew up the shadow of Mapperley mental health hospital, an imposing Victorian building originally opened Nottingham Borough Lunatic Asylum. The threat of being sent there seemed real and constant in his childhood.
All the finely executed character sketches and kooky anecdotes are essentially celebrations of the Hoult family’s neurodiversity – which seems to have been passed to a new generation, as the comic’s seven-year-old son has already developed some endearingly wacky traits. United in being unconventional, there are also clear, loving bonds holding the family together, giving the show a tender warmth even through it’s most bizarre interactions.
The stories are themselves, in Hoult’s capable hands, outlandishly funny, and raucous belly laughs fill the room from start to finish, from tales of marring into a posh family to – eventually – that peculiar Christmas story. Colin could be a surreal family sitcom with all the oddities and scrapes Hoult regales, but every commissioner would tell him to tone it down, as no one would believe these outlandish characters. But Hoult puts real heart into their portrayal, making this show all the more hilarious.
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