Catching Up
I'd had good intentions - "hey, I know, since I'm going to see a few stand-up acts this year, maybe I could blog a review after each performance! I'd actually have some content!"
And then I didn't. Oh sure, you got Little Britain and Danny Bhoi, but what about the Umbilical Brothers, Dylan Moran and the latest performer (and object of a rather acute girly crush*), Adam Hills? So, in a desperate attempt to bring myself up to speed, a brief review of the missing professional amusers:
The Umbilical Brothers
I'd seen the Umbilical Brothers last year, not knowing what to expect. Since I loved every minute of it (and can still sometimes be heard adopting a silly voice to talk about "fantastical ballooooooons"), my expectations were high. Although the premise of this-isn't-actually-a-performance-it's-a-rehearsal didn't work as well as last year's this-performance-is-actually-a-dvd, I still wasn't disappointed. The live special effects (using nothing but a video camera, a screen, and a hand puppet) were hilarious. The recurring audience plant-jokes didn't work astonishingly well, but I can probably put that down to the premise not geling with me very well. So, while I haven't found myself obsessing about The Rehearsal to the degree that I did with Speedmouse, I'm still looking forward to the next tour...
Dylan Moran
We'd been looking forward to Dylan Moran for a while, and through various misunderstandings and ticket confusions, we got there eventually. I'm not even going to try to guess how many people were in the audience - but Mr. Moran can't be a very poor man... The show involved a disproportionate number of iron ore jokes (of all things!), but knowing that my resources-sector-oriented husband got a kick out of it was enough for me. :-) That probably even made up for the digs about New Zealand towards the end, which were perhaps a bit beneath this century's Blackadder?
(Seriously, what great joy do Australians get from hearing foreign celebrities bash New Zealand? Don't you people realise they tell the same sheep-shagging jokes to them about you? And then back in Edinburgh or Bristol or Dublin or Torquay or wherever they go to share a pint with their own kind they laugh about "them silly Antipodeans and their pointless rivalries - as if there's any difference between the two nations anyway!")
Since I'm not a great fan of smoking in any context, lighting up on stage makes me growl. And no, I don't care that it's part of his Bernard Black-ish persona. If smoking is actually scripted into the show, you have no grounds to claim it's just "who you are". Still, I forgive, and would probably pay exorbitant amounts again for another round. The man deserves kudos for sheer stamina: entertaining on stage for an hour and a half straight can't be that easy.
(notice how the review gets longer the more recent the performance was?)
Adam Hills
Adam Hills was a late addition to our dance card - and considering the original plan was to limit ourselves to Little britain and Dylan Moran we hadn't really been sticking to our restrictions anyway. I was desperately hoping the show would be a good one - the last thing I'd want would be for the last performance to suck. Luckily this one wiped the floor with all the other performances to date. Possibly even Speedmouse.
The performance was at the Octagon, where we'd last seen (a rather disappointing) Lano and Woodley. The Octagon is for a UWA student and occasional lecturer an odd place to go for entertainment. Ben used to have some of his Physics lectures in the Octagon, so the location reminds him of being hungover on Tuesday mornings. Possibly even while Brian Stone was lecturing. :-) For me whole concept of "comedian in a lecture theatre"-premise really made me consider my own role in academia/infotainment...
And then the lights went down, show started and the awesomeness began. The really exceptional aspect of Hills' show as compared to all the others was the improvisational element. Starting form the names of a few people in the front row, building up slowly he managed to get two audience members to recreate a crucial scene from The Graduate, the rest of the audience quietly singing Mrs Robinson. Half an hour of audience participation-derived hilarity before (obviously, anyway) breaking into any actual prepared material. That's pretty impressive. And, unlike with Little Britain, the audience participation was not cringe-worthy or embarrassing or just mean. That's probably what I enjoyed most, the fact that the humour was in fact very positive, and there was a really good vibe about the whole show.
*Sadly/fortunately I'm not the only one who now utterly adores Adam Hills: after the show there were a few gasps of "oh, I'm so going to marry him!" heard around the car park - immediately followed by apologies to offended boyfriends. An appropriation of the Rodgers&Hammerstein Cinderella, where all the women go gaga at the thought of the Prince: "I wish were an older girl/I wish I were a younger girl/I wish I were a single girl etc".
***.
So, would I go see these people again? Yes. However, some more enthusiastically that others. In order of preference;
1.Adam Hills
2. The Umbilical Brothers
3. Danny Bhoi (if the show is longer)
4. Dylan Moran
5. Little Britain