Bec Hill: Caught on Tape

You can’t really describe the appeal of a Bec Hill show without first describing her appearance. Her permanent, toothy grin sits beneath a heavy-fringed bob, flicked eyelashes and sculpted eyebrows. Compact and girlish, she resembles a cute Manga superhero, armed only with the power of enthusiasm.

Hill’s seemingly irrepressible fizz is put to great use early on, when she calls two punters up on stage to act out a ‘news’ video that she made with her brother as a child, for which she’s lost the video but retains the script. Hill’s delight in watching the pair’s spirited but clumsy performance sets a sunny and inclusive tone, which she uses to push us through a fair few awkward moments in an enjoyable but somewhat uneven show.

Sometimes the awkwardness is intentional, as when Hills uses self-consciously bad wordplay and then flashes that grin, daring us to come with her. Her homemade flipcharts, which use pull-the-tab mechanisms and cutesy drawings to illustrate more puns, recall Josie Long at her most childlike and ingenious; the last of these alone is worth the entry price.

Observational gags about, for example, Cher’s hair in the '80s and '90s, are less successful. Her engaging physicality animates some of her storytelling, but fails to save the less inspired routines. The theme, about regret and how we use it, feels forced, and there are some heavy-handed moments of unsmiling sincerity that grate against the lightness of the rest of the set.

But the overall effect is one of innocent joy, leaving the audience with smiles on their faces that should easily last the rest of the evening.