Apart from the comedian, that's all you normally see onstage at a comedy gig.
Which is fine if you're in a comedy club but in a theatre it can look a bit effortless - as in, lacking effort. The lights pick out all the shabby spots on the bare stage - the slightly ripped curtain, the duct tape marks on the floor, the unused trap door. And when the comedian comes on, the lights pick out all the shabby spots on them too - the ill-fitting jeans, the cig packet in the back pocket, the crumpled flat-dry jumper.
The whole thing is danger of looking a bit unloved - not a great start if you're setting out to make the audience love you.
So should a comedy set have a set?
It depends on what, as a comedian, you're trying to do.
If your act hovers in the rich borderland between comic routine and theatrical monologue then it might make sense. Which is probably why the last time I saw Daniel Kitson telling his entrancing stories onstage he was surrounded by suitcases which he had personally turned into tiny houses with windows which lit up. Depending on your perspective, this was either a beautiful visual accompaniment to a story about moving house or an intricate demonstration of an alarming amount of creative displacement activity.
If you really wish you were a rock star but your songs keep turning out funny, you might still want to go to town on the back-combing, stadium lights and wind machines when you sing them (step forward, in your bare feet, Tim Minchin). A Tim Minchin gig is arguably a comedy show not a comedy set and it is created for the arena as much as for the theatre - I am not sure how many comedy clubs come with grand pianos.
On the other hand, if you don't even want a microphone to get between you and your audience you might just pad on stage dressed for a night in front of the telly and in your (did I dream it?) socks. Reginald D. Hunter was clearly here to chat and his informal start set the stage in a very different way for a remarkably intimate show in a 1300 seater theatre.
The point is that whatever they were, or weren't surrounded by, it was clear that all three of these comedians had thought about how they could create a conducive atmosphere for their comedy. They didn't just go for the default setting: that mike stand and that bottle of water.
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