Dru Cripps: Juicy Bits comedy review – Shuffling vulnerability
Undefinable quality from mercurial musical clown who battles bravely against the odds
A potentially awkward gig this, as a drastically undersold Dru Cripps invited his modest audience to sit directly around him. But if the loop station-deploying, improvising musical clown was feeling a sting of hubris for booking two shows in one night on a Champions League evening of football, with sound bleed from the bar downstairs and foreknowledge of a reviewer’s presence, he wasn’t noticeably inhibited, making the best of his circumstances and coercing bearable intimacy. A likeable goof in a boiler suit and backward baseball cap, with the affable mateyness of a tradesman seeking a solid review and decent cup of tea, he’s also got the shuffling vulnerability of a slightly embarrassed twentysomething trying to explain his nonsense job to older relatives. The gently mercurial, self-aware London-based act has definitely got something, it’s just difficult to define what.
There are shades of Abandoman to him, constantly trying to forge connections with the crowd, the gee whizz tech he uses predisposing him to layer up hip-hop tunes. But while his questions to the audience, one by one, left to right, are the stock enquiries of the compere (name and profession, supplemented by their preferred musical genre), he’s otherwise formally looser and less showy than Rob Broderick’s barnstorming alter ego, less reliant on spontaneous lyrical invention.
Cripps is merely creating curious, playful vibes, extolling you to contribute enthusiasm and minor vocal additions. Theoretically mortifying, with a Sword Of Damocles awareness that your turn is coming next, in practice Juicy Bits soon demonstrates itself to be easy-going fun, as he sustains the group dynamic and eagerly, if ironically, hails even the most mundane elements of his audience’s lives. Despite the beatboxing, his persona has little braggadocio and rarely rises above the status of humble jester, eliding the gap between performer and the performed to.
Dru Cripps: Juicy Bits reviewed at Committee Room No 9, as part of Glasgow International Comedy Festival.