Comedy Festival 2018: Cam Knight leaves too many loose ends untied in Get Rich Or Die Crying ★★½

A GOOD, confident stand-up, Cam Knight lets comic digressions get the better of him in a reasonably funny routine that leaves too many questions unanswered.

THERE’S a lot going on in Cam Knight’s life. This is good for us because it gives him a lot to talk about, his natural confidence and handsome features making him easy on the eye and ear.

He’s 40, a father, financially troubled and is one year sober. He’s worried about the world his kids will grow up in and is scared of the dark. It feels like he has his life under control, but just barely.

Trouble is, Knight only half tells us about a lot of stuff. Most comedians are naturally discursive, and after a digression will return to what they were talking about to deliver a payoff.

Cam Knight in Get Rich Or Die Crying.

Yet when Knight goes off topic he has as tendency to stay there. He’s a funny bloke, and much of his material goes over a treat, yet you’re often left wondering what happened to topics he introduced a few moments earlier.

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Most prominently, his drinking issues are dealt with too sketchily. As some alcoholics contend, being off the bottle for a year doesn’t mean you’ve stopped drinking, it only means you’ve paused.

But rather than develop the topic to tell us about how he’s coping, Knight side-steps into a bit about how he behaved while on a trip to Japan with his mates and that drinking brings out the worst version of a person. But, how is sobriety faring against his other stresses? More please.

The same goes for his money woes, which have forced him and his wife to seriously budget and face up to some tough decisions, such as what to do with their beloved dog, which has thus far cost them a ridiculous amount to maintain. It’s a situation with no resolution.

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As for the fears Knight has for his children’s future and the world they’ll face, he’s put his faith in science. This leads to a fairly amusing reminiscence about science class and a girl he had the hots for, but he leaves the wider topic hanging. What justifies his faith in science?

As a right-thinking guy, Knight is prone to embrace PC thinking a little too warmly to be funny. His anecdote about teaching his child racial tolerance via drawings of lizards is strained to the point of outright tweeness. Someone with so much life experience should be looking deeper.

When it comes to bantering with the audience Knight is very good, playing on his instant likeability. With a clear gift for improv, he kept the small, tight room of 40 laughing most of the time.

Knight’s confidence is certainly locked in place, but his material can struggle to match it. He likes juggling a lot of balls, he just needs to pay some mind about not leaving them in the air or letting them fall to the floor.

Cam Knight, Get Rich or Die Crying

Mantra on Russell, 222 Russell St, until April 22.

comedyfestival.com.au