Rhod Gilbert - Who’s Eaten Gilbert’s Grape?

Published Tuesday 21 August 2007 at 18:50 by William McEvoy

Rhod Gilbert starts off slowly, in self-critical vein.

Nobody’s heard of the film he’s basing the show on and he claims he’s a miserabilist rather than a comedian. But no, the show has a romantic heart behind its tough-talking opening, and is often gruffly hilarious.

The film, starring Johnny Depp and Leonardo Di Caprio, is about American small-town despair, and Gilbert finds it has a lot in common with his own early years in Wales. In fact, the land of his birth comes in for a bit of a kicking, albeit tongue in cheek.

There are brilliant moments in which he tells us about the complexity of the Welsh language or the ubiquity of the name Dai, and surreal, ever so slightly perverted set-pieces about inter-species sex.

Although Gilbert plays his audience well, he tends to return to some audience members a bit too much for comfort, but the general tone is warm and lively. As the set winds up, we learn Gilbert was watching the film when he first met his girlfriend in a lonely, grotty hotel with loud drilling in the next room.

It could all end happily, with a new baby in tow, but the irrepressibly irascible comic has a cunning little twist of an ending to round things off.