Bill Bailey – Live, Michael Fowler Centre, reviewed by Lynn Freeman.

MAD hair, bulging eyes, very fine musician, the only lovable character on the TV show Black Books, and a comedian popular enough to book out the Michael Fowler Centre, not once, but twice. There’s a reason we all wanted to see Bill Bailey. He rocks.
The theme, loose though it is, is doubt. There’s not a flicker of a doubt that he’s a great showman, and even though he’s been touring this show for a while, he still gets a kick out of getting his audience singing along, taking on non-traditional comedic avenues like cognitive dissidence, our rather endearing attempts at heckling and his own on-stage mishaps.
As with this last show of a couple of years ago, music plays a huge part in his show, as he riffs away in different genres. He seems at his happiest when at his keyboard, guitar or Middle-Eastern oud. While he starts off with good if predictable New Zealand material – the All Whites and their set of draws, there’s not much of a nod to his host country. And his set on the original Doubting Thomas as portrayed by artists over the years goes on a bit long. These are small points when he kept a large crowd who’d braved atrocious weather to see him, engaged and animated for two hours.