Review: Adam Hills: Mess Around – Assembly@Assembly Hall, Edinburgh.

Adam Hills

This year Adam Hills has thrown out the rule book. He declined to write an Edinburgh show, instead opting to ‘mess around’ with members of the audience as he says they’re ‘instantly more fascinating than any attention seeking comedian on-stage’, though he tells us not to worry as he has some jokes and stories prepared in case it all turns to shit. On this night, Hills gathered together an 11 year old boy called Eric, a roadie looking man called Hamish and his wife Margaret, a Harley Davidson employee named Alex and a front row which coincidentally consisted entirely of females.

From this motley crew he reconstructed an entire rock gig scenario with the child being body surfed across the front row while the rest performed the gig.

Hills is an amazing act for those surreal and amazing moments, all the more proved by the BSL interpreter he gets to sign his gigs on Sundays so deaf people can come see the show. Of course Hills has to mess with her, making her job difficult and forces her to sign funny and rude words as well as words there aren’t sign language equivalents of which provides great entertainment for the 250 capacity sold out crowd.

It is difficult to review this show as a month long running piece, as it is so spontaneous and changes every night, however Hills does prove his merit in his own work with routines on Lady Gaga, the Queen and Prince Phillip at the Royal Variety Performance and the best pizza he’s ever had in Australia the day before his wedding.  This show is in my top three of the whole festival this year –   I just hope it’s as good every night as it was on Sunday.

Date of live review: Sunday 15th August

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P.S Details and pictures of this bizarre night can be found on his website and blog. Take a look here.