"If you say anything amazing," says Reginald D Hunter, "I will sit my ass down." That, supposedly, is the deal throughout Hunter's six-week residency at this West End venue. The US stand-up has never been very attached to plain old joke-peddling. His reputation is for provocation and free thinking. His gigs are less stand-up comedy, more staging posts in his lifelong effort to divine human nature, to untangle its knots. Now, he's opening that investigation up to the floor, with a late-night weekend show that mixes comedy with Question Time. Hunter calls it "grown folks chatting".
It's a fine idea - but there are teething problems. Anyone who's ever been the brunt of a stand-up's banter knows that the relationship between comedian and punter is an unequal one. Here, Hunter solicits the audience's opinions on a range of topics, some characteristically uncomfortable ("Any woman here ever been beaten up by a man?"). But the comic imperative demands that he turn our answers, however sincerely expressed, into jokes. Likewise, there's a sense that Hunter reserves the rights of intellectual enquiry to himself alone.
When a woman in the front row challenges his pejorative use of the word cunt, he gives her no credit for making a point that one could easily imagine Hunter himself making.
The upshot is an inhibited audience. But not an unhappy one, because Hunter himself is on fine comic form. I loved his material on the Pope's demise ("Death turns us into instant bullshitters"). And on the calculation made by parents who surrendered their sons to Michael Jackson: "He's already wanking. Might as well be wanked off by the King of Pop."
I think his effort to engage the audience on a more equal basis is a genuine one. But that audience's status (and confidence) can rise only when Hunter relinquishes some status of his own. Then, these comic conferences might really take off.
· Friday and Saturdays until May 14. Box office: 020-7434 9629.
