Press

4 star review in Fest

Richard Herring

Pod Deco, until Aug 29, 19:10, £12/£10 (£8.50).

For an overweight, lank-haired, physically uncoordinated, socially maladroit man well into middle-age (and still single), somehow Richard Herring seems a little self-conscious. Any cruel comment by a shameless hack could push him over the edge. That's what I'm hoping, anyway. The Twelve Tasks of Hercules Terrace sees him confronting middle-age malaise, his sense of not having achieved anything. If he's this funny when he's in a bit of a funk, I want to see him cracking jokes from a bottomless pit of absolute despair. It should be hilarious stuff.

Nominally his show sees him emulating the superhuman feats of the Roman Empire's favourite demi-god. In fact, the link between Hercules' labours and Herring's is tenuous in the extreme (very rarely would you apply the term ‘Herculean' to a game involving number plate spotting) and any failures are briskly skirted around (usually with a neat “and isn't that really more heroic, when you think about it?”).

With the help of a projector, his practised stage manner, the childish intensity with which he gives himself to his tasks and the confessional honesty beneath his anecdotes, Herring can keep you laughing through any question about the importance or coherence of his journey. And delivered with wit to spare and a healthy appreciation of the silliness of his trials, it's great stuff from start to finish – even material on the dissolution of his relationship and his subsequent depression. Let's just hope he becomes ill again. The fat bastard. Every little helps.
thrill: Germaine Greer's watching her bra closely right now.

spill: Must all comedy now be based around a wacky mission?

Alan Trotter