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Bill
Hicks: Slight Return
 World tour including UK and Australia in spring 2008.
The
true story of one man’s attempt to change
the world through stand-up.
In this solo comedy, the greatest comedian
ever returns from the dead for
one more show, revealing how to end the war on terror, why drugs are
better than alcohol, and what the Bush family has done for porn.
The show has already played two sell-out
seasons at the Edinburgh festival, an extended London run at Soho Theatre
last year, and two UK tours. Chas Early’s astonishing
performance returned to the West End for a strictly limited run in June
2006, before playing its third season at the Edinburgh festival.
In December 2006 the show played three nights at the Bloomsbury Theatre
in the West End.
On tour, the show has enjoyed incredible sales, regularly adding extra
performances or returning to venues for a second visit. A DVD is available
for interested venues to review the show on request.
"Unimaginably brilliant- a comedy blinder. Beautiful,
heavy-hitting, bad boy stuff... and it is almost painfully good. It
is almost painfully
Hicks." The
Scotsman
“Terrific. Chas Early gives this rollicking
reincarnation integrity and wit.” Metro
“An absolutely must-see show. From the point
of view of appearance, movement, facial expression, delivery and content,
Slight Return is a
triumph of
mimicry, research and writing.” The Independent
“Achieves the impossible: a brave idea that shouldn’t work – but
it does.”
Time Out
“The routines carry just the right plaintive,
told-you-so indignation, and there are one-liners to treasure at every
turn.” Daily Telegraph
Advisories
: contains strong language and sexual references, age guidance 16+
Written
by Richard Hurst & Chas Early, Performed by Chas Early, Directed
by Richard Hurst
Full Reviews
DAILY TELEGRAPH
This inspired fringe show has been
crying out for a West End transfer, and finally gets one, albeit only
for a few weeks. The premise - that
cult stand-up Bill Hicks, who died in 1994, has come back from the grave
to impart fresh observations - looks cheesy on paper, but works brilliantly
in practice. Chas Early faultlessly replicates Hicks' grouchy stage-persona
and the script, co-written with Richard Hurst and taking in September
11, the internet age and celebrity culture, suggests what a field-day
the man himself would have had were he still around.
HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
Bottom line: The late comic
brought brilliantly to life and just as funny.
Chas Early's pitch perfect impression of a nightclub act by the much-revered
late comedian in "Bill Hicks: Slight Return," playing
seven West End dates before returning for the third time to the
Edinburgh
Fringe Festival, is a well-observed piece of theater but more than
that, it's
flat-out funny.
Hicks, born in Georgia and raised in Texas, was just 33 when he died
of pancreatic cancer in 1994 in Little Rock, Arkansas, but his comic
legend
lives on. Early and co-writer Richard Hurst have achieved an astonishingly
believable rendering of what a Hicks routine might be today, given the
events of the 12 years since his death.
Sharing the intellectual but raucous and scathing comic sensibility
of Lenny Bruce and Sam Kinison, who also both died young, Hicks
took on politics,
business, social pretense and anything that smacked of hypocrisy
and mendacity. The material in "Slight Return" is new
but it has the shape and taste of Hicks' own and is delivered by
Early in
a quite stunning
feat of mimicry.
The comedian emerges on stage wearing angels' wings amid smoke and bright
lights as a voice asks if Bill Hicks could return from heaven, what
would he make of the world today, and would he have some really good
dick jokes?
Immediately employing Hicks' talent for identifying the most audacious
comic spin on any subject, he lights up a cigarette, observing that
it's easy to ignore the health warning on the pack when you've already
died
of cancer.
A riff on heaven's house band -- evidently Sid Vicious can actually
play guitar in the afterlife -- leads to biting lines about boy
bands, Coldplay
and Dido. Bill Gates' introducing Dido at the Live 8 concert was "etched
on the tombstone of rock music," he says.
He goes after the David Letterman show for famously bumping a Hicks
routine on pro-lifers and jeers at Dennis Leary for "reinterpreting" Hicks'
material. Leary, he says, "only travels by bandwagon," and
mocks him among others for capitalizing on the events of 9/11, which
he then
mines for searing comic gems.
George W. Bush, Tony Blair and John Kerry come in for some scalding
attention and topics range from the shooting at Columbine to the death
of Princess
Diana, and the invasion of Iraq to the 2005 terror bombings in London.
The gags are penetrating and outrageously funny. The audience is always
aware that there's a play going on and is more watchful and less immediately
responsive than a comedian's nightclub crowd might be. That's because
the very fine construction of the one-hour show reveals a keen insight
into the fabric of Hicks' approach to humor and it is matched by Early's
uncanny ability to channel the comedian's sublime gifts.
In character, Early asks why Hicks should return in the form of
an unknown British actor. "No one would turn up for a show just billed Chas
Early," he says. They will.
THE SCOTSMAN
Imitation without limitation
For two years I have been pretty negative about this piece. Whether
you are going to simply hijack Bill Hicks's pulling power
and do some stand-up, or attempt
to "be" Hicks in something more drama-based, it will always
sound, frankly, a bit dodgy.
Well, now I have seen it and it is unimaginably brilliant. It even
addresses the hijacking issue onstage in an unexpectedly honest and
hugely clever
moment towards the end. There is a small amount of set-up and backstory
and it is
done nicely. "Hicks" talks about his parents, his time
on the David Letterman show, his death and heaven's house band. But
it comes
across as a
killer stand-up
set.
It is probably comedic blasphemy to say it, but I enjoyed this more than
I enjoyed Bill Hicks himself. Stand-ups must feel distinctly uneasy to
see an
actor play
a comedy blinder like this.
Chas Early is Hicks - and I mean is. He has that wonderful wasted passion,
the gloriously base enthusiasm for all things sexual and more charm than
the Halliwell
Sisters. I hated that the show finished. I wanted more - and I hated that
I knew that the great guy I saw onstage isn't there any more. Never has
my disbelief
been more willingly suspended.
The comedy is heavy-hitting and beautiful bad-boy stuff. The material kicks
audience ass so you know there will be bruising tomorrow. There is rage
and there is reflection,
there is the personal and the political and, of course, there is sex and
drugs and rock and roll.
Chas Early owns every f***ing word of it. He co-wrote the piece with his
director Richard Hurst, and it is almost painfully good. It is almost painfully
Hicks.
Some of the set is very topical. Early's late Hicks attacks Bush, Kerry
and Blair, is fabulously foul about Coldplay, Dido and Travis, he is still
anti-guns
and
Denis Leary and pro-abortion and pro-pornography.
Now I have to go and have sex and take some psychotropic drugs. It's in
the contract Bill imposed on his entire audience. You've got to love a
guy like
that. I certainly
did.
DAILY TELEGRAPH
World-famous dead comedians are stalking
the major venues of Edinburgh. At the Pleasance, in Slight Return,
America's much-missed motormouth
Bill Hicks descends
to deliver new-minted swipes about the deteriorating state of the world
since his departure in 1994. You [can] see just how much care and attention
has
been lavished on Bill Hicks's comeback gig by Richard Hurst and Chas
Early - the
latter reincarnating Hicks
with pouting, squinting aplomb. All the staple targets of Hicks' best-loved
routines are here - pop music, corporate America, drugs, porn -
but updated to take in
September 11, the war in Iraq and the internet age. The routines carry
just the right plaintive, told-you-so indignation, and there are one-liners
to treasure
at every turn: "It's easier to ignore the health warnings on the packets
when you've already died of cancer," the revenant comic quips as
he lights up.
THE GUARDIAN GUIDE
Whether you consider the premise
of htis show to be brave or suicidal, it certainly went down well last
year with sell-out shows in Edinburgh
followed by a run at
Soho Theatre in London. The premise is simple, if daunting: writer Richard
Hurst and writer/performer Chas Early have given Bill Hicks the opportunity
to have
one last hour of stand-up from beyond the grave, which means he can get his
teeth into Bush Junior and Coldplay. Early's impersonation of the
great man is unsettlingly
good - all the physical mannerisms and speech rhythms are spookily present
and correct - and while not all of the material is quite up to Hicks'
standard, you
could be forgiven for thinking that, at the very least, his essence is being
channelled. While the sections concerning the conflict in the Gulf and the
war on terror may sound depressingly familiar to those previously
schooled in the
great man's rants, the writers show no fear in confonting emotive contemorary
events in Hicks' rebarbative style.
THE STAGE
Bill Hicks was probably the most influential American
comic of his generation, with his influence over the genre increasing
exponentially following his death
from cancer in 1994.
On paper, it seems only a fool would write a show of ‘new’ material
and then conjure Hicks down from heaven to perform it. But Chas Early and Richard
Hurst manage it in this stunningly well-crafted show. Yes, Early’s
impersonation is immaculate and yes, he does look a little like Hicks
with his bowl haircut
and chubby features. But it is the quality of the material that astounds.
Of course, such is the path of history that many of the things Hicks ranted
about in the early nineties - the war in Iraq, President Bush - have sadly
also been
resurrected at the start of the 21st century. But that only gives Early and
Hurst an anchor upon which to build their material. They have to come up
with the rest
- and how they do.
The script consists of angry, powerful polemic, delivered with real passion.
It is somewhat ironic that, with few exceptions, none of the actual stand-ups
at the festival are delivering material as powerful as this. It is satirical,
it is well-researched, it is astonishingly good.
THE
INDEPENDENT
In life or death, Bill Hicks can do no wrong in my eyes,
something I feel it's important to declare. I know that people tire
of the clichéd
comparisons that pit him against other comedians, and of the
resurrection of his name at
any given opportunity. Indeed, Chas Early, who has revived the iconic
American comedian, repudiates this approach in Hicks's name.
Nevertheless, for those people like me - the converted - this is an absolutely
must-see show and there are surely enough of us to pack The Pleasance Hut
for the Edinburgh run. Before and after seeing the show, I was struck by
how ambitious
it is, but the love Early has for his subject carries it off. From the
point of view of appearance, movement, facial expression, delivery and
content,
Slight Return is a triumph of mimicry, research and writing.
In the decade since Hicks's death there has been a wealth of material
he would have got his teeth into: the Bush "election", the
second Gulf War and the War on Terror, Gap kids watching Michael Moore
movies and so on...
Either
by transposing the structure of previous routines on to these subjects
or using the essence of Bill, Early conjures up something that doesn't
take the name
of his hero in vain (though he relies too much, perhaps, on Hicks's
pornographic bent).
The full force of his act will never live up to seeing Hicks live, but
remember: this is theatre, and the anticipation of the punchline is not
the only factor
at work here. In this comedy by proxy, there is another layer between the
comedian / actor and the audience.
TIME OUT
Chas Early (together with director and co-writer
Richard Hurst) achieve the impossible by imagining the return of Bill
Hicks from the netherworld
to perform a 50-minute
gig in which Early/Hicks comments on recent events in the world. It's a brave
(bordering on foolhardy) idea that shouldn't work. But it does.
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