Comedy! Anger! Live!

Saw a bizarre display of late-night, drunken comedy at the festival "Best of the Fest" last night. The line-up was filled with funny-accented English speakers (Irish, Scotch, Aussie, blah) until Rich Hall, the headliner and final performer of the night, came on at nearly one a.m. I've seen him a couple of times already at the Fringe, but he was in particularly belligerent form on this night, declaiming things like, "Man, what the hell am I talking about?" and "I guess you could say that I'm pretty damn drunk, ladies and gentlemen!" As he knotted up his twelve minutes, he began goading the audience. After harassing some attractive first-row women, his attentions soon settled on an Aussie girl in the fifth row. Through his pestering, he found out that the girl had been dating her boyfriend for four years. He asked, "Well, is your boyfriend here tonight?" He was. He was right next to her. Rich Hall then interrogated the boyfriend, demanding an answer to why he had only been "dating" this beautiful woman for four years. "Take the plunge!" he yelled, "You're not going to find anyone more beautiful than her... I mean, look at you and look at her. Go for it!" The crowd began cheering on. Mr. Hall moved closer to the couple and continued his pestering, "What the fuck are you waiting for?" A few seconds later, the comedian jumped off the stage and entered the audience, taking a seat next to the couple. With mic in hand, he pressed and pressed. "Time to go for it, okay!" But he soon realized the futility of this pestering. He gave up, sort of, and went back onto to the stage. He began giving a little drunken, comic sendoff to the standoff, when the couple began heckling him from the audience, shouting "Enough!" and "Just shut up!" Mr. Hall was obviously a bit fazed by this lash back, but went on to close his set, the air thick with awkwardness.

Then, Adam Hills, the night's MC came on to end the show. In the process, he attempted to make nice with the couple, assuring them that Mr. Hall had placed the boyfriend in a no-win situation. Before he could say goodnight, though, Rich Hall bounded back onto the stage, grabbed the mic back from Adam Hills and walked right back up to the couple, saying, "Okay now. We're going to raise the stakes here." Immediately, the girlfriend got out of her seat, walked onto the stage and took the mic from Rich Hall - now completely dumbfounded. She said something like, "Now I'm gonna raise the stakes here!" At this point, I turned my head to look at Daoud (castmate and swell audience partner) and saw open-mouthed shock at the proceedings. I must have resembled it. The girlfriend (quite sotted herself) then blabbed something like, "That man over there has been my boyfriend for four incredible years and I love him more than anything." The audience was rapt. "I've got an idea for you, Rich. I want you to get down on your knees and propose to Adam right now." To this, Rich asked, "My one question is this: do I get to be the mommy or the daddy?" She said, "the mommy." Mr. Hall then told Adam Hills to, "Get close and suck mommy's dick!"