Rich Hall review: Music at heart of night at Stourbridge Comedy Festival

The latest evening of the festival saw veteran American comedy and musician Rich Hall take to the stage at Katie Fitzgerald's to deliver a tour-de-force performance.

Deadpan in his delivery and able to keep a steady flow of lines coming out, Hall was in his element in front of a sold-out audience in his second show of the day.

He broke his act up into two parts, doing a straight stand up routine in the first part which had the audience constantly rolling with laughter.

From one of his neighbours in Montana voting for Donald Trump because he didn't disclose his tax returns as Mary and Joseph never did in the bible to talking about the Mexican border wall, his act was hilarious.

He also spoke about his life in England, joking about British films all being about tragedies, but one person also has a talent, and told a very funny story of being invited to Buckingham Palace and being mistaken for a Canadian, not a comedian, by Prince Phillip.

After leaving the room rocking after slamming Donald Trump for Covfefe and misspelling words, Hall picked up his guitar and launched into part two, singing funny versions of country and western songs.

These included a song about a girl from Stourbridge marrying a man from Kidderminster and a participation song "Fur on a stick" with an audience member signing the line for him.

Afterwards, he said he was at the beginning of his new tour, having rearranged the dates from 2020 when the pandemic started, and said the room at Katie Fitzgerald's had fit what he liked about comedy.

He said: "When you have people really crammed into a venue like this, the focus is different to playing a theatre, which are great to play, but comedy just thrives on a bunch of people being put into a room.

"If you get that, with very little trappings, then the focus is just on you and the crowd and they're right there on top of you, and everybody can hear what the other person is saying.

"You might make more money doing a bigger venue, but that's not the essence of stand up, whereas tonight with close to 100 people is more like it as you're making them laugh."

Hall was ably supported on the night by two very funny acts which used music as part of their routines.

Micky P Kerr opened the evening with a series of short, but very funny songs on guitar about travel, dinner ladies, toothpaste in an unfortunate area.

He also brought the house down with a performance of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air theme in the style of Bob Dylan and got the audience singing along to Bee Gees songs while he performed the rest in a series of grunts and noises.

The other act on the night was duo Good Kids, who performed a series of sketches ranging from a pyromaniac Fireman Sam to a bizarre song about a Chocolate fountain and a football manager monologue.