Bill Hicks: Dark Poet

Mike Fish’s one-man show attempts to tell a tragic story about American comic Bill Hicks—who died of pancreatic cancer in 1994, aged just 32—by smuggling the darkness of his personal life into a standup routine. Emulating the much-adored Hicks is a tough ask, and while this man-behind-the-microphone concept—drawing on Kevin Booth and Michael Bertin’s 2005 biography—isn’t a bad one, Fish’s performance simply doesn’t work.

The early stages are painful to watch, his leery, creepily intense delivery eliciting zero laughs, the tiny audience becoming defensive in the face of his attempts at audience interaction (myself included: demanding a response to an invite to give him a blow-job did not, ahem, go down well). First we’re told off for not laughing; later we’re told this is serious theatre, and we should be moved by the dying man. But the show’s a muddle, and the main move was towards the exit.

Fish may be deliberately channelling Hicks at his most belligerently acidic, but the experience remains sadly awkward, prompting walk outs, uncontrollable sniggering and literal staring at the ceiling. It didn't get any less awkward when Fish acknowledged all this, repeatedly asking if he should finish early.

With slicked back blonde hair, he doesn’t look much like Hicks – but this is theatre, we can play make-believe. He’s clearly aiming at some essence of the man, but the hunkered posture, lines shot at us from beneath his eyebrows, and nasal, nasty Southern drawl also fail to capture Hicks’ charisma.