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Brick Wall Comedy
Brick Wall Comedy

Otis Lee Crenshaw: Live

Rich Hall

2001 · 71 min

Rich Hall sings deadpan country songs as a Tennessee jailbird.

Rich Hall spent the turn of the millennium letting an ex-con country singer hijack his act. Otis Lee Crenshaw is a gravel-voiced Tennessee jailbird with a Confederate flag bandana and a habit of marrying women named Brenda. Hall plays the alter ego straight. The performance serves as both an affectionate parody of Southern outlaws and a vehicle for tightly constructed musical comedy.

Filmed in London in 2001, the release arrived shortly after the Crenshaw persona earned Hall the Perrier Comedy Award at the Edinburgh Fringe. Accompanied by a two-piece acoustic band called the Black Liars, Hall mixes confrontational crowd work with deadpan songwriting. He questions the lyrical logic of Elvis Presley’s “Jailhouse Rock” and vents about Garth Brooks. He also details the tragic life of a child burdened with the name “Incest Boy” due to a hospital clerical error.

The set list

3 bits

  1. Song about the lack of love in a front-row bank clerk's life

    Opening number addressing an audience member directly with the lyric 'you've got 3 diamonds on your shirt, but no heart.'

  2. Childhood poverty and backyard tarpaulin

    Explaining his upbringing was so poor that his parents placed blue tarpaulin in the yard to make airplane pilots think they had a pool.

  3. Deconstruction of 'Jailhouse Rock'

    A satirical, impeccably observed pastiche and comedic teardown of the classic song.

How it plays

Tone
Satirical, witty, earthy, and deadpan.
On stage
Redneck ex-convict country singer Otis Lee Crenshaw, delivering sharp one-liners and whisky-laced songs in a guttural Southern drawl.
Pace
Musical pacing with country and western songs interspersed with relaxed, sharp audience interaction.
About
jail and prison life, love and broken hearts, women, trailer parks, Southern white trash, office managers

What the critics said

Praised as a genuinely funny, knowledgeable pastiche of country music idioms and conventions that laughs with the genre rather than simply mocking it, highlighted by strong character work and inventive lyrics.

In the room: Described as playing before a nigh-hysterical, almost riotous London comedy club crowd.

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: imdb.com, en.kinorium.com, movie-trailer.co.uk, pro.imdb.com, chortle.co.uk, amazon.com.

Backstory

Conceived as a fictional prisoner exchange programme sending Tennessee convict Otis Lee Crenshaw to England, performing live with his backing band The Black Liars.

Details

Released
Taped
Comedy Store, London
Runtime
71 min
Director
Tom Poole
Honors
Perrier Comedy Award-winning show
Topics
After
Comedy Central Presents: Otis Lee Crenshaw (2003)

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