<i>An Evening with Noel Fielding</i> is a comedic acid trip, writes Karl Puschmann.
The Dark Side of the Moon sneered down from the sky at a 90s raver Indian warchief and a glittery knight armed with a kitchen mop. The moon was daring the duo to go through the Plasticine door behind them and enter the fantasy world where his minions, an angry
triangle, a minotaur and a reverse minotaur with the head of Flight of the Conchords star Jemaine Clement lay in wait in a labyrinth. To their right sat an audience member cloaked in a rubbish bag with a plastic bucket over his head.
None of this is the strange part. No. The strange part is how normal it all seemed at the time.
It started small. Noel Fielding took to the stage and embraced the bare accoutrements of traditional stand-up comedy. A red curtain, a glass of water and some classic-style comedy routines that were only slightly askew. However each bit he ran through upped the ante, gradually getting weirder and weirder until eventually he was strutting around like a demented cock repeatedly squawking "I am the chicken boy!" to equal parts applause and confusion.
From that point on it was total immersion into his bonkers mad world. Fielding was quickly joined by a cast of characters, some physical, some on a big screen, that included favourites from his cult hit telly show The Mighty Boosh. Fielding himself appeared in purposefully shonky costumes as he worked his way through a bizarre whodunit storyline that had the real Fielding getting kidnapped from his own show. This paved the way for some genuinely hilarious audience participation as he quizzed the crowd for clues in his guise as a trigger-happy New York city detective.
At points the surrealism got too much even for Fielding. After being flummoxed by the cryptic reply "Somewhere," to his question, "Have you ever had a monkey in your house?" he held his head in his hands and wailed "Is this a comedy show or a mental breakdown?"
