Review by Mikyla Gilbert – Performance date: Thursday 6 March 2025, The Garden of Unearthly Delights, Adelaide, South Australia
Cranium of Curiosities a barrel of laughs
Haven’t seen a Ross Noble show? Okay, let me do my best to prepare you… if that’s even possible.
First, abandon any hope of structure, coherence, or even the vaguest hint of a theme. That’s why he pulls the big crowds year in and year out. I kid you not, one year I went to see his show three nights in a row and NOTHING was the same. Each time, I was blown away by his ability to not just make the audience laugh themselves silly but also to entertain himself with his ridiculous stories and antics.
Cranium of Curiosities is less a stand-up routine and more an unpredictable, fast-paced journey through the inner workings of Noble’s brain, which operates on a frequency the rest of us can only dream of tuning into.
From the moment Noble steps on stage, it’s clear that whatever he had planned – if he planned anything at all – is already out the window. What follows is a glorious, chaotic, and utterly hilarious masterclass in thinking aloud.
He jokes about never going to therapy because he’d never stop talking and the psych’s mind would possibly explode, even though, by charging Noble by the hour, they could buy a Ferrari. Having sought therapy for decades, I can confidently say that attending a Ross Noble show is just as good and much cheaper than a visit to the quack!
Noble doesn’t tell jokes he unravels an ever-expanding tapestry of absurdity, weaving together half-formed ideas, spontaneous observations, and audience interactions into something that shouldn’t make sense but somehow does. He takes a throwaway audience heckle and rides it like a deranged jockey, steering it through increasingly bizarre twists and turns until it morphs into an entirely new comedic creature.
The night I attended, we went from billionaires Bezos and Branson spending obscene amounts of money to go into outer space to how Branson should instead focus on how stupid using tongs to get crisps out of a jar in the Virgin Lounges, complete with an onstage impersonation of a disco-dancing dinosaur… all in 5 minutes.
Audience members were targeted (warning: this is not a show where you should leave to pee or grab a beverage without being berated and becoming part of the show), including a dog with a support human. Stories jumped from James Bond, Adolf Hitler, the Pope, Dancing With The Stars, Kim Kardashian, Jesus, and a true tale about Noble almost getting arrested for hijinks on a Jurassic Park ride at a Spanish theme park.
Just when you think Noble is lost in a labyrinth of his own making, he somehow always finds his way back to a previous thread, doing the heads in of a massive percentage of the crowd.
If you’re after tightly scripted punchlines and polished narratives with jokes you can share over coffee at work the next day, this is not the show for you.
But if you want to witness the unfiltered, beautifully unhinged workings of a comic genius in real-time, Cranium of Curiosities is the ride of your life. Strap yourself in for an hour with the rockstar of stand-up.
Ross Noble – Cranium of Curiosities
On until Sunday, 23 March
The Roundhouse at The Garden of Unearthly Delights
Tickets!
