Presented by Emily Grace
Reviewed: 9th March, 2022,
Emily Grace and Jacob Jackman have been working their acts over on Adelaide audiences for the past several years. In this hour show, Rooted allows each performer to take roughly half the allotted time for their best material from the past year, and some truly excellent comedy is the result.
Those familiar with these two performers might find their pairing a little peculiar given their rather different styles of humour. Jacob Jackman is hard to pin down, but he can probably be best described as charming observational nonsense. Clever but also crude, he explores the philosophical in his own jaunty and occasionally dark manner.
Conversely Emily Grace is a ray of sunshine on stage. Her positivity and poise bring a refreshing joy to what is a particularly uncomfortable venue. It would be hard to recommend Hell’s Kitchen to anyone as a place to spend an extended amount of time, but these two performers make the visit worthwhile.
The shows opens a little coldly, and there is some initial awkwardness but it does eventually pay off with the longest call back gag I’ve seen so far this season. Jackman is the first to take us on a tour of his inverted look on the world until roughly halfway, when he introduces Grace who brings us home with some delightful personal vignettes.
Both comics show fantastic promise for future seasons. Jackman has some genuinely original and side-splitting material and he will grow into one of Adelaide’s best in time. Grace is entirely comfortable on stage and her slice of life humour is endlessly relatable and perceptive. Where Jackman works us over like a punching bag at times, Grace has the delicate patience of a gardener, letting the jokes grow like vines around us until we are slowly engulfed in joy.
While these two don’t make every post a winner this season, a double act of this quality for the asking price is hard to go past. Some comics this Fringe have dived straight back into a full solo hour and with little opportunities in the recent past, it seems not all were ready to do so. Wisely these two locals have trimmed the fat and put together a punchy show between the two of them that would make a great start to your night out, at the convenient time of 5:45PM.
Next year, it would be wonderful to see both performers come back with a solo show each. Undoubtedly you should catch them when you can, either this weekend at Rooted, or throughout the rest of the year, when Adelaide Comedy is most in need of loyal audiences to support talented acts such as these.
Reviewed by Nick Harris
Twitter: @warmsteadyglow
Venue: Hell’s Kitchen at Rhino Room, Pirie St, Adelaide.
Season: Until 13 March 2022
Duration: 50min.
Tickets: $15 – $20
Bookings: https://adelaidefringe.com.au/fringetix/emily-grace-rooted-af2022
Rating out of 5: 3.5
Adelaide Fringe, Emily Grace, Jacob Jackman, Adelaide Comedy, Rhino Room
#Adelaide #ADLFringe #Rooted #RhinoRoom #AdelaideComedy
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