I must start this review by declaring a conflict of interests: I decided to review Nick Gibb because I was already a fan of his cult webcomic Dead Philosophers in Heaven.
So I was already well-disposed towards the Kiwi newcomer, but beyond that Nick Gibb is a genuinely talented comedian, erudite and educated. He has already won New Zealand's most prestigious comedy award, the Billy T. To summarise the comic's strengths in a sentence: Gibb is quite simply a terrific storyteller, hooking the audience in as soon as he begins his hilarious anecdotes.
Gibb's act revolves around his own liberal, nerdy, middle-class frustrations and the way they interact with the world around him. His razor-sharp wit makes fine work of material such as his own Tourette's Syndrome, and its surprising advantages, getting life lessons from self-checkout machines, his one and only appearance on the New Zealand version of Cops and the surprisingly intimate relationship he feels we all have with Google.
His fantastic imagery captures the absurdity of his stories so well that I had a grin fixed on my face for the entirety of his show, and the audience were easily kept happy with his insecure charm and endearing awkwardness. Not all the jokes worked as well as others, but he kept the laughs coming anyway, and once he gets into his stride, Gibb has an unstoppable nervous energy about him which crackles along with the pace of his storytelling.
Ultimately, Nick Gibb's show is not quite polished enough to be perfect, but he's a great weaver of tales which had the audience giggling along for pretty much the whole hour. Gibb is a sparklingly talented new comic with some brilliantly original material who you should see before he starts charging entrance. I would be very surprised if Nick Gibb wasn't a name with serious clout in the comedy world in the near future.
Show Times: 6-27 Aug (not 14 or 21), 22:45
Ticket Prices: Free