Kai Humphries: Bare Faced Cheek

If Kai Humphries wanted to attract a more cerebral audience to his shows, then posing butt naked for his promotional poster certainly wasn't the right way to go about it. He himself states that the image was sent to his agent as a joke and, having been taken too far, now draws in an crowd of perverts, impatient to see a nude comic. Of course, as the room begins to whoop and chant for this outcome, Humphries puts up little fight. The show ends with a striptease as promised.

While he can't be blamed for giving an audience what they want, the performer's acquiescence betrays a certain lack of confidence in his real material, especially when two perfect endings are passed over in favour of this nonsense: his contrasting of the morals of his grandfathers in an affecting, prop-assisted display and his demonstrating his battle-rap skills. The former encapsulates Humphries' thoughtfulness, while the latter serves as the perfect vehicle for his caustic, rapid-fire wit. Both are so good as to almost make one forget an unpleasant routine concerning a dwarf, his hackneyed observations on relationships and a series of anecdotes that revolve around improbable misunderstandings. An immensely gifted stand-up, Humphries falters in his almost pathological desire to score easy laughs.