BILL COSBY LARGER THAN TV LIFE

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32879, 30 March 1972, Page 12

BILL COSBY LARGER THAN TV LIFE

Bill Cosby walked casually into the lives of some 2000 citizens of Christchurch last evening, and there he will stay. His two-hour monologues must rank among the most diverting, certainly the most novel, stage presentations Christchurch has enjoyed. At one moment, the Civic Theatre was looking its threadbare self—a large audi-

ence, but a stage empty of appeal, empty of everything save a commonplace kitchen chair. Then, without any sort of introduction or preliminaries, Cosby was there. And he delighted his audience

with soliloquies, his practical philosophies, and with his magnificent sense of the ridiculous.

He was startled, at first, by his surroundings and de-

cided, after a brief examination, that the Civic’s most pressing needs were an organ, and a few matches. He threatened, too, to deliver his remarks with his back to the audience, because of a conviction that from the murky receases of backstage, a “giant New Zealand rat” might emerge to attack him.

On television, Cosby is an excellent comedian. On stage, he is all the better for the time at his disposal, for the intimacy he manages to build between the stage and the audience. He had no props, save that awful chair and a microphone, from which he was able to produce a quite extraordinary range of sound effects to complement his fancies, fables, and philosophies. Bill Cosby is a very polished artist. He has an easy flow of words, and a voice he used tellingly in contrasts, at different stages of his whimsical addresses—filling the thatre sometimes, at others merely delivering a silky aside. He covered a tremendous range of subjects in his diverting verbal ramble—flying, films, cricket, family. Russell was there, of course; Russell is the young brother Cosby tried to flush down the toilet bowl.

He has a wonderful sense of timing. Sometimes he dangled his wit before his audience, building up his absurd tales with a luxurious laziness, but all the while improving the impact of the punch lines. Sometimes there wasn’t one—just a swift change of course to paddle up another stream of fantasy and fun. The audience loved it all. And no wonder. The pity of it all is that Cosby was here for only an evening, and it will probably be two years before he returns.—R.T.B.