expect from his act, regardless of their provenance. ‘I haven’t been heckled a lot. I don’t think I’ve had anyone stand up and tell me they didn’t like what I was saying.’
Despite hailing from Virginia, and graduating from the Saturday Night Live repertory of comedians, Hall has enjoyed a large measure of success in the UK, particularly with Otis Lee who scooped the Perrier Award back in 2000. Hall’s 2004 book of Crenshaw’s memoirs I Blame Society has been adapted for the screen and is about to be filmed by the British comedian-turned-director Mel Smith. Hall himself remains fairly ambivalent about his character’s musical genre of choice: he nominated country and western music as one of his pet dislikes when he appeared on Room 101.
So, is today’s spoof country and western act a conceit mainly served up to confirm non- American audiences’ prejudices about the United States and its culture? Christopher Green believes that the reaction of any audience to Tina C will be dictated by the relationship that audience has with America. The Tina character is constructed as an outsider, an American in a non-American environment,’ he says. ‘This makes it tricky in the States, where I have to be an outsider in a non-Nashville environment. This will all fall apart when I go to Nashville. I want to make a documentary about taking Tina to Nashville; it could be explosive!’
Wilson Dixon, the country legend from Cripple Creek, Colorado, feels American audiences’ reaction to his act is no different to their reaction to any other flavour of musical performance. ‘Sometimes it’s projectiles and cuss words,’ he
says. ‘Other times it’s bewildered indifference. I definitely prefer the former; it gives you something to play with and/or duck. Americans generally react with sustained whooping and cheering which is way out of proportion with the thing they’re actually experiencing. Any viewers of Letterman will know what I’m talking about.’
Mth Otis Lee Crenshaw growling his way into a disgraceful old age, and Tina C taking her unique brand of gingham-clad performance all the way to DC, surely the great attraction of country music as a basis for comedy, is that — mirroring the longevity of bona frde performers such as Kenny and Dolly - there’s no pressure to pension off your creation. So, will we see Tina C, nipped, tucked, high of hair and full of bosom, strutting her stuff onstage in her 60s?
‘I skilfully have my pensioner character, Ida Barr, that I can do when I’m old,’ says Green. ’Trna is pretty and that’s hard work so I may tire of it, but there is her emotional album about not having children, called Barren Country, to stage yet; so there are no plans to retire her. And, of course, we have to follow her progress through a term in the White House.’
Wilson Dixon, The Stand III a IV, 558 7272, 1-24 Aug (not 1 1), 5pm, £8.50 (£7.50). Preview 31 Jul, £7.50 (£5.50); Otis Loo Crenshaw, Pleasaan Courtyard, 556 5550, 3-25 Aug (not 1 1), 9.20pm, £14-£15 (£12.50-£14.50). Previews until 2 Aug,
£1 1; Tina C, Uddorbolly’s Pasture, 0844 545 5252, 2-25 Aug (not 1 1), 10.20pm, £12.50—£14.5O (£1 1-£13). Previews 31 Jul 0. 1 Aug, £8.
Tall tae
Reginald D Hunter is a giant of UK stand-up. But, as he tells
Jay Richardson, he's still trying to escape the sins of his father
‘l have always found Edinburgh intense, in my soul and in my belly. You can’t say there ain’t tension in my shows. It’s in my life and I’ll put it all on y’all.’ After more than a decade of stand-up, Reginald D Hunter maintains that both the Fringe and television 'don't really know what to do with me. A Perrier judge told me that a couple of years ago. I'm black but I don’t have a lot of pro-black views. l’m American but I'm not pro-American. l genuinely like women, but I get angry with them.
In a Superman T-shirt and girlish pigtails, the triple Perrier-nominee explains why he’s returning to the Fringe with No Country for Grown Men, venturing that ‘there are a lot of challenges to masculinity today and I got something to say about it. I don't believe in infantilising people, particulany women. There's this myth about their softness and how you've got to protect them. Women can perpetrate it to their own advantage and as a person, I don’t like undue influence on me. I get resentful when someone believes they know my politics or how I should feel. Because there's a lot of women that need a good cussin', just like a lot of people. They don't need to be exempt because they got titties.’
Hunter's routines invariably centre on his contemporary preoccupations. but relationships are a constant. ‘I'm closer to figuring out my fucked-upness about women,’ he muses. 'But there's no point in me getting into a relationship until I discover what I do that drives them crazy. I spent years listening to ex-girtfn'ends telling me what a bastard l was. yet they still wanted me. You hear something long enough, it becomes a doctrine: “I am emotionally unavailable". But then you realise you’re taking a view of yourself from someone who didn’t get what they wanted.’
Hunter may have partly figured out his feelings towards women, but he’s clear on where some of his attitudes and behavioural patterns stem from. 'lf I followed my instinct, I'd be trying to have sex all the time, get high all the time and be any kind of fool all the time. My father had many affairs. And if I had been married at the age of 19, I would have slept with a bunch of women who weren't my wife too. The thing is, I'm not becoming him. I am him.’
Regina/d 0 Hunter, Pleasance Courtyard, 556 6550, 3—14 Aug (not 12), 17.15pm, £72—£‘14 (£7 7 —£1 2. 50). Previews until 2 Aug, £6.
31 Jul-7 Aug 2008 TH. LIST mTIVAL “MRI 18