Woof-o-meter :-
0-Die Bastard : 1-Crap : 2-Rubbish(watchable) : 3-OK : 3.5-Nice : 4-Good : 4.5-Very Good : 5-WOW
31.10.10 : The Roxbury Horror Show RETURNS! : Roxbury Hotel
I can't say I love cabaret, but I have seen this show before and know what to expect, so it's mainly ok from my perspective. This time I actually found out what was happening. The show is mainly a spoof at horror based operas or shows, with new humorous words written for well know songs, and also some entirely new songs(or at least if they are based on originals I haven't heard them before). Again Jon Williams stole the show, somewhat, with the only parts that got good laughs. The rest of the cast was nice, and had pretty costumes, and sung well, even Tim de Sousa sang in tune this time, but there isn't enough laughs throughout for me to be captivated. OK 3
31.10.10 : Theatresports Cranston Cup - Heat # 9 : Factory Theatre - impro
Bavaria’s Wurst was the only team firing on all cylinders, as was evident when they nearly ran down the eventual winners with their bonus 5 point head start. All their 6 scenes were very funny, even the last one where Jon had to leave halfway through because of his commitment at The Roxbury Horror Show. They cracked it in the Gym scene with Jon playing a incompetent gun-ho trainer. Then in the inonimate(inanimate) object scene with him operating on his mother and bring her back to life. Then they all worked together in their Shakespearian scene where the mother is trying to get her sons to sort out their differences and get along. Then Jon again in the diseased monkey scene with him only reading lines from a Mr T phone app, like in the game where they read out lines from a play-book. Their indecision scene probably didn't fulfil the criteria, but it was still funny. And their final Bald Rock Opera, with Jon still being funny while trying to get out of the building to make his appointment. Even with Jon gone the remaining 2 players did well to finish it off with another unfortunate bald player from another team. I also liked the new karaoke game from All The Single Ladies. Jay had to make up and sing a song about Bob the turtle while the rest of the cast played it out like a video, but not a good music video, but a bad one like you see in karaoke videos. Their Berlin Wall Ballet was good, but their animal bar and audience sound effects scenes were only nice. More Ads than Game Time's Miss Universe scene was good, but it was their new game that grabbed my attention, because it initially seemed very difficult. It's based on replay scenes, where the first is played normal, and then repeat 3 more times, but differently, like with different genres, or different point of views, or faster, etc, but the twist with their game is one character leaves at the end of each scene. I was watching the first scene, and there was heaps of dialogue from the main character, and I was thinking, how the hell is the new guy taking over going to remember all those lines. But they must have done this game before because they knew what to do and only repeated the main words they remembered to much amusement of the crowd. Between 3.5-4
29.10.10 : Red - movie
Action, Comedy, Crime : A retired agent is put on a hit list and he has to find out why. There is nothing special about this simple story, it was so predictable I was hoping the twist could inject something interesting, but even that was predictable. A Team, The Losers/Knight & Day, Killers conglomerate. Started at 3.5 sunk to 3 near the yawning end and then annoyed to 2.5 with it's stupid sequel preview.
28.10.10 : Tom Ballard & Acquaintances : Oxford Art Factory
A big crowd turned up and were very eager to go, maybe too eager, but by the second half they settled down. Tom hosted and can be hit and miss for me but tonight he was good. We had some songs next, unfortunately I'm a bit over the female singers doing the usual slow emotional solo stuff so it wasn't for me, but she can sing and the crowd liked it. Eric Hutton did a routine instead of his rambling so was good. Michael Hing had problems when the microphone cut out, but he shouldn't have worried because he was shouting so loud everyone still heard him. Matt Okine is always good and ended the bracket. In the second half the crowd lost their over exuberance, so they didn't cheer crazily at everything all the time, but this half was just as good as the first. Rhys Nicholson was his not very PC best. Amelia Jane-Hunter stunned the crowd with her rude unladylike material. Dave Jory was unusually animated during his set and was good. And Daniel Townes finished the night off on a high. The crowd sounded like a 5 in the first half, but I think they were just very excited about the night, and settled down to a 4 in the second. I think if the night was shorter it would have kept it's momentum better. Even though it's getting to be a chore, and all the comics are repeats, I though it was still good. 4
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27.10.10 : Full Body Contact No Love Junior Tennis : Hermann's Bar - impro
If you missed this one you have made a grave error in judgement, because everyone was killing it in what I think was the best(I will check at the end of the year) long form impro show this year, .
Sam Jenkins, James Colley, Alistair Magee, Matt Watson, Chad O'Neill. Things were going good at a BBQ when an unexpected annoying stranger(James) turns up with amnesia. The party goers are very annoyed and wonder how he found out about the party, and it's only after the aggressive questioning by the host that we learn that the host himself posted it in the classifieds. Meanwhile the Power Rangers are trying to reform after an tragic accident where one member was lost. But because of the accident the Rangers become more bitchy at each other and a verbal fight ensues with one becoming blue and depressed and one turning green with envy. They try to form a Megazord with one less member but fail. Back at the BBQ the stranger gets obsessed with the colour red and has an urge to climb a mountain. At the top he meets the confused Rangers who recognise him, and when they finally assemble the Megazord to defeat a monster the audience erupted. The funny parts was James crazy but hilarious talk to audience narration fill in, so things made more scene, because he thought the cryptic clues from his amnesia character may have been confusing. And the Megazord crazy assembly of bodies that resembled a torture scene from Guantánamo Bay. Everyone worked together to produce a very good scene.
Michael Hing, Bridie Connell, Phil Roser, Gen Fricker. When Michael asked for a suggestion and got a rude response he went on one of his analytical rants that had to be stopped, and apologised for, because he was making it even worst, but eventually they got "Nutella" to work with. It's not that often you see Michael take a lead role these days, but he was great playing the husband that tried to cover up the fact that he forgot to buy the essential Nutella for his wife. He tries to fool her with sinister villain voice-over but she just gets more annoyed and tells him his voice-over is lame. This prompts an inappropriate retaliation from him about her size, that had him back peddling pretty quickly. The argument escalated when they swap places and portray each other, with exaggerated performances, of how the other appears to them, and again, like in real life, the girl wins, and she threatens him with divorce. He finds this a bit drastic and goes to the shop to get some Nutella. At the shop he strikes a deal with the clerk for the last Nutella by doing voice-over announcements in exchange. But upon leaving the clerk threatens him that a ghost will get him if he doesn't adhere to the deal. The audience got frisky at this point and shouted out funny responses to sentences that had pauses in them while the players were thinking of a suitable next word. Upon getting home he reneges on his promise and is visited by a ghost that questions the disappearance of his wife. He sends him on a quest to the top of a mountain to get her and his, new suddenly appearing, daughter. At the base of the mountain he seeks direction from a blind man that can see and continues up the mountain, but not after having his face fondled by the said man. At the peek he finally concedes that she is his daughter and gives them the Nutella and his heart. The standout was Michael with his fast talking and stating of the obvious, even thought the obvious may be laterally placed. Excellent.
Jim Fishwick, Charlie Mitchell, Michael Richardson, Sertan Seral, Alex Lee. One day a scientist in a bunker makes a talking plant, but when a guy comes in and eats a palm tree in front of her, the shock of seeing her boyfriend being murdered makes her go berserk. She forces the scientist to cut his legs off and give them to her, and then sets off to destroy humanity. Out on the road the palm tree eater finds the cure for the plant's rampage, in the form of the Royal Gardner, and enters the bunker to kill the talking plant, but alas she is gone. At Buckingham palace the talking plant has an audience with the Queen, but an impatient talking corgi kills the Queen. The plant finally kills the corgi and becomes the plant Queen. The palm killer finally catches the Plant Queen and defeats her. Everyone worked well making this another very good scene.
Janek Gonsalkorale, Carlo Ritchie, Nick Fischer, Tom Walker. A man asks God for help when his new unborn son has the disease. God arrives and they travel to his home, with the man walking all the way on his knees. At his home the man complains about sore knees so God gives him a lotion to soothe the pain, but unfortunately the lotion eats his kneecaps off. God then goes to the kitchen to get him a drink but just fills the glass with his spit and returns with knives strapped to his elbows and a blender attached to his back. Lucifer then appears so as to battle God in a showdown, and that's when we find out they are just a crazy homeless guys that live in the closed down amusement park. Being homeless they battle with the only weapons available and have a shoe fight to the end. I don't know how anyone can play with Carlo, because when he goes on those crazy rants it's like the other players get so engrossed in the hilarious dialogue that they have trouble working with the unpredictable nature of it, and end up being mesmerizing by it, it's like they're having so much fun listening to him they forget they are in the show, luckily Carlo leaves pauses so the others can compose themselves, and it results in another excellent scene.
The audience sounded like all the scenes were 5's but for me there was 3 at 5 and 1 at 4.5. Writing this got me down because I can't convey the humour of the night in words, and this just ends up another never to repeated fun night that will be lost in time. And just thinking back at all those wonderful scenes from the last 11 years that were over 5's and now lost in time, it kind of gets me down that no one will ever know how good they were(Sorry for the rant I'm just being old). Special mention to the audience who excelled themselves, audiences like that is what impro shows crave, because they wanted to get involved, and are keen to laugh.
Improv Explosion - Grant Davies, Amanda Buckley, Susie Youssef, Lisa Ricketts, Steve Lynch and Steen Raskopouls
I don't know if it's just me but when stranger performs here it feels like the audience acts differently, it's like when a student is on stage the laugher is instantaneously, but with strangers it's delayed or subdued. It's like the audience says, these people are different to me and they probably aren't on my wavelength so they won't appeal to me, and that's what it felt like to me when Amanda Buckley started her story about her fear of velvet. But within a minute she had won them over, and it's like the audience suddenly realises that these people do think exactly like them, and that they do have a common interest. The other difference with this audience is once your in their family they show it with unadulterated laughing and enthusiasm, unlike most average audiences that are mainly reserved. Once the ice was broken Improv Explosion tore it up with scene after scene, but not with continuing stories, but with short unrelated scenes, like a bunch of shorter open scenes all strung together.
It started with 2 lovers separated by a velvet bridge that she is too repulsed to cross because of her Haptodysphoria. Next was the killer funny scene in a doctors office with a hypochondriac getting news that she has eczema. But when the doctor(Amanda) said, "They say eczema is just a skin condition, but I think you might be dirty" people nearly fell off their seats from laughter. Then the other players just came in and took it even further, with characters that were excessively repulsed by her disease, and even the patient(Lisa) exaggerating being upset and fake crying to good effect. And that's what happened all night, everyone just milked every second of the whole 45 minutes with the cast always adding bits or exemplifying parts, and even the add-on's wasn't just fillers but a clever gags so the whole show was hot with absolutely no dead spots. The boys got up next pretending to be a couple about to kiss, Grant milked it by gee-ing up the audience and asking them if they should actually do it, and as you would expect from the girls in the audience they shouted "DO IT", even thought they have already seen a lot of boy kissing on this stage before. Poor Steve wasn't keen on the idea, and got close, but just couldn't go through with it and said he would spew if he did, and that's when Amanda comes in as some sort of German sex fiend wanting to film the mouth to mouth spewing, ala 2 girls and a cup. Next Grant comes into the Velvet Emporium as a musician and starts giving his velvet harmonica cunnilingus while Lisa plays the soundless velvet tambourine. Next was a young man on his wedding day talking to his mother, when the son gently pretends to love tap her with his fist. She replies with "Don't punch your mum or I'll cut off your penis", in Italian accent. The father then enters and gives his son his cut off penis as a gift, and this is where everyone chimed in with the small penis jokes. The son finally uses the member as a small lapel ornament and asks his mum if that was alright, she replies that it was ok because she had no use it for.
Lisa next told a nice story about how she would practice smiles for school photos.
Amanda next took the audience by surprise, in the Posh woman scene, when she went on one of her dialogue rants that caused the crowd to cheer, maybe they thought only Carlo can do them. The girls were steering the scene in one direction when Grant came in and hijacked it by standing in front of them and facing them, back to us. He then went through the motions of entering a elevator and standing at the back. Amanda then, playing her character, chastised him for not pressing the button for his floor, to much amusement for everyone. So to get back at her he does an eligible character that no one could understand and then exits the lift. Susie then has a come back by asking if he was playing an Asian character, and that resulted in even more laughs.
Grant and Steve took the stereotypes to the max in the land of gay Tarzan, with the joined at the hip Tarzan and Mr Jane. Steen played a lost explorer that enters a cave with a funny echo, if you clapped, any number of echoes could return. It got to the stage there were so many echoes that the audience joined in and clapped out a song, there's that enthusiastic audience again. The cave is dark so the explorer has to move by feel and finds a woman tied up. His fumbling hands were getting close to inappropriate areas when gay Tarzan and Mr Jane repeatedly swing in on vines from opposite sides of the stage to meet in the middle in different sexual positions, until the 3rd one when Grant accidentally gets tagged in the nuts.
Amanda tells another story about her hippie phase and her ability to actually see auras, that ended up a actual medical condition.
In the next office scene, Steen does this long dialogue and tells a co worker about his secret love for her, but in a Cuban accent. After Steen does all this set up for the scene, Susie just comes in and says that she can't understand a word he said, because his accent was so heavy, and that just starts a number of games where they make fun of each other by pretending not to understand what the other is saying. Lisa comes in to unsuccessfully interpret the conversation. But finally the man's message gets through in the form of a sexual aura of a Quicksilver tee shirt flailing between his legs.
At another doctors office a girl is mistakenly given a clean bill of health, and phones her mum with the good news that she will live another 48 years, but when the doctor is given the correct test results he gives her 48 hours to live. Lisa cleverly comes in as the other character across town that is living it up because she thinks she has only 48 hours to live.
It was Susie's time to tell a story, and it was about her cousin who first dated a funeral director, and then a stripper. Next was a funny scene at a girls hens night that got awkward because the arranged strippers were the hen's parents. At a funeral home the directors are complaining that business is slow, when a girl comes in and confesses she will die in 36 hours, but instead of the workers showing sympathy they rejoice and thank God for the new death, with God(Grant) replying with "your welcome". Next follows some very groan worthy but funny lines about them trying to speed up her dying process. Steen tries to set up a joke and asks if she has family, but unfortunately Amanda replies with yes. Steen then says that it was unfortunate because he had a joke if she didn't. As you would expect everyone wanted to hear the joke so the cast had to go to all the trouble of going back and set the joke up again, just to hear the punchline. The re-setup was funnier than the joke, because it was another of those bad taste but funny ones. The dying woman picks mystery coffin 3 and tries it out, but unfortunately it's lined with velvet. Next a couple are eating a meal when Amanda comes in as a black American house keeper that is insulted, because they are complaining about the meal she has just cooked. She tells them off in that Black American stereotype and surprises the audience again with another funny character, which got more cheering. Grant then says something a bit racist, but justifies it by saying he is playing a racist in this scene. Then Lisa takes it even further when she says she is a slave trader and is only keeping the black cook as a pet. They started the next scene in a perfume shop when s##t got really weird. When Grant entered the stage I said to myself, is this a Uni Review, because he appeared on stage semi naked only wearing undies, and with the usual no justification for it. Unfortunately I think Grant's mum didn't love him, because she has forgotten to tell him about wearing suitable underwear public, because the sight of those briefs made my eyes bleed. Grant made a suitable exit to hide his embarrassment but Steve decided to make him suffer a bit more and called him back as the Uni's vice chancellor, before he could get dressed, but thankfully the scene was short and he didn't come back looking like that again. Lisa then played a student at Sydney Uni, but confessed that Macquarie was her preferred one, and this had the desired effect of ribbing the staunch Sydney Uni crowd, because she got joking boos from the audience. Grant sensed the unpopularity of the humorous ribbing and said "You'd be better slagging off the blacks", rather than insult Sydney Uni in this room.
Since the last scene was about racism, Steen told a story of how he was taunted at school after the other students saw the newly released Wog Boy. It's kind of weird because I thought that movie made wogs popular, but then again I wasn't at school in those days. To the delight of the audience, the cast pulled out their best Bankstown accents and characters, in a scene where a boy comes to pick up his girl friend from her Greek family. Everyone took the stereotypes to the max, to much laughter, but it was Grant that showed his age when he suggested they take the Gemini, because that was the car that was popular with the young people 30 years ago. Finally we ended up back at the cliff and velvet bridge, where the couple finally got together. Lastly, to the surprise of the Improv Explosion crew because most of them haven't seen this before, Steen opened up the audience question time, as usual, where the cast have to make up extra details to the scenes they just performed. And even though most of the crew were surprised, by being put on the spot, they were super sharp and fielded the questions easily. If you look at it like it was 16 open scenes there has been some funnier individual scenes in the past, but I can't say I have seen that many good scenes in a row. Even the submission they did for the Del Close Improv Marathon in New York wasn't as funny, so if you saw this show you should be thankful because you saw something special.
5.
24.10.10 : Theatresports Cranston Cup - Heat # 8 : Factory Theatre - impro
This one was at the same level as most of the shows recently, ok to watch but not that innovative, basically not that high on the laugh meter. In fact the scores related the feel exactly, with a ton of 3's, a couple of 4's, and hardly any 5's. The Northern Nonsequiturs are a young team and may lack a little in the ideas department but they made up for it by being very technical accurate. They know the games and they know the tricks to make them work, and after all aren't the games in Theatresports there to make the scene funny even if the players aren't. Their expert double figures in the 3rd round was good, but it was their send up of poor Jane Simmons in the 5th, that was cruel but funny, that scored a 5. The young players can scoff at Miss Jane, but when she did Impro consistently she would always rip it up, and even I don't remember one of her teams ever missing a semi final, something the young players should be aspiring to do. The Untitled Dolph Lundgren Project weren't that technically accurate, and even got help in their crime endowments scene, and their usual innovative ideas were a bit sporadic so they were a bit up and down. The National Average League All-Stars got consistent 4's so they won. 3.5
22.10.10 : Magic Comedy Night : Tap Gallery
Things didn't start well. There was logistic problems and the advertised, supposedly free, complimentary drink was by donation, so it put you in a bad mood even before things started, but in the end it was nice. The brief was a bit vague, but it was 4 female comics, 3 magic acts, 1 mime, one humorous song, and some crazy guy at the end. All the stand-ups were girls that usually support the Wicked Women shows. 3 were nice but it was Amanda Gray that kicked the house down with strong laughs by everyone throughout her set, she looked a lot more comfortable than last time I saw her at the Store, which I think was her first time there. I'm not a fan of magic acts, aren't we just a bit too old for magic tricks these days, but they weren't boring at all, and were quite nice. I hate mimes, because we were forced to watch those lame Marcel Marceau films at school, but this wasn't. She was very succinct and you could tell exactly what she was doing in her baby minding scene, even though it was a series of event rather than a story. Her second bit was was a sign language interpretation of a song which again was very succinct. But it was the last act that was total crap. The night was very long, maybe too long, and the last guy came up and did a juvenile primary school euphemistic innuendos that were just plain boring. At least the resident cat came to visit us at that point so I had something to do. 3.5
20.10.10 : Hermann's Heroes Present a Series of Different Fruit Pies : Hermann's Bar
I just found it a strange night and a bit deflating, and even feeling a bit out of place and not that motivated to write about it, but that's probably just me, because the crowd sounded like they liked it. I know what level to expect at these shows, which is usually ok punctuated with some worthy jokes, but when I saw a professional comic on the bill and another 2 young comics that do the circuit I thought it would be a good night, but it didn't pan out that way for me. All the students were around the same level, mainly nice, but then we had a surprise of Damian Smith turning up. Damian has been doing alright in conventional rooms lately, and I thought he would appeal to a young crowd because he is young, but the crowd sounded a bit distant, and a can't see why, because he was easily at the same level or higher than the students. All I can think of was is opening statement that he has Asperger's might have scared the crowd, It's not a problem in other places because we are used to it by now but I do remember the first time I heard it it was a bit unsettling. I have seen Jack Druce on Raw comedy, but the couple times I have seen him live he didn't live up to that performance, so he ended up only nice. It's rare to get a professional comic, like Jacques Barrett, to shows like this, and especially a one that always gets a response from the audience greater than 4's, but strangely this audience didn't sound as loud as they should have been. Maybe his talking to the audience didn't go to plan, and I wouldn't personally take fashion advice from a male comic because they don't dress that well, as can be seen when there is only one comic that goes to the trouble of wearing a suit, but overall I though he was as good as usual. Yet the laugh level from the audience didn't seem to be much higher than for anyone else. I think maybe the audience was more of a tausch(Jacques pronouncing of touché) crowd and would have appreciated his clever mispronouncing of common words, but you have to get what you can from the pros in a non corporate room. The second half wasn't as good as the first, and the night ended quite strangely. I think it was just me and the problem was in my head, because the crowd sounded around 3.5-4
19.10.10 : Full Body Contact No Love Tennis : Roxbury Hotel - impro
Not that big on laughs but it was still ok. Carlo Ritchie & Steve Lynch had the funniest scene with their farm scene when all the animals had disappeared and little Timmy was sent to get oats to attract them back. The funny thing was Carlo's knowledge of farm life, which caught Steve hilariously unaware because he corrected and added technical points about country life during the scene, and when Steve tried to suggest that the person he was talking to from the farm next door was a ghost because no one had seen him for 27 years and presumed he to have died, Carlo came up with a much simpler conclusion that had everyone cracking up, so much so than even Steve had to turn away to hide his laughing because the solution was so simple. Oddly enough I found Cale Bain's dog chasing story the next most interesting. Steen & Jordan Raskopoulos's rich man poor man with the former flying to the shop in a helicopter for bread was performed well and was nice. Their second scene was a couple of music executives discussing a show when Steen tried to inject something different into the scene by taking his cloths off, but when he got to his tee shirt he only mined taking it off, to the girls booing disapproval because they were baying for flesh, so to oblige them he stripped down to his boxers and got a cheer, but unfortunately Jordan wanted to take it a step further and moved his cloths to the back of the room, to see if he could justify how he could get them back during the scene. The rest of the show was nice, just not outstanding for the well worn, 3.5 from me but the audience sounded about 3.5-4.
17.10.10 : Cockatoo at the Rox - The Worlds Funniest Pub : Roxbury Hotel
This crowd wasn't as good as last night, but even with that being said some of the comics didn't do that well, even the ones that did well last night. Daniel Townes hosted and had to work to get the crowd to laugh, but he has enough good stuff to always hit the mark. We started with Fiona O'Loughlin, who does seem a touch different since she stopped drinking, kind of less whimsical, but she was still good, like she always is. Joel Creasey, who killed it last night, and Tom Ballard, didn't do that well. They were ok but their routines had the same feel like when I first saw them, being not that funny, and the crowd sounded like they felt the same. Jeff Green was brutal. He had the audience reduced to hysterical jellyfish with people keeling over from laughing, even I was seeing spots in the first minute, so much so I had to look away in case I fainted. He slowed it down somewhat in the middle, so we could regain consciousness, but then hammered us again at the end knocking us senseless. The crowd loved him and gave him the biggest cheer of the night, and they did it again at the end when his name was mentioned at the final thank yous. Jackie Loeb's routine was a little different from last time I saw her, this one had more songs where's the old one had more talking and gags. Even though I liked the older routine better the crowd liked it a lot and gave her the second biggest cheer of the night. I was surprised that Lindsay Webb didn't kill with his set material, because he did last night, but when he got to the audience add-libbing he killed it again and had the audience in stitches. Wil Anderson did a long set and only used half the stuff he used from last night, which was good for me. He was good and got about equal second loudest applause. 4
16.10.10 : World's Funniest Wreckage! : Laugh Garage Syd
The place was packed, and why wouldn't it be when everyone was ripping it up. We started with Ride The Wombat and it was their second song about pubes and Mick Meredith's mucking around that really kicked the night off. Dave Bloustien nailed it and was laugh out loud funny, rather than just humorous, and all he did was talk faster so the jokes were closer together. Rhys Nicholson move over, we now have a new contender for most inappropriate gay comic with Thai Rivera. Rhy has his tribute to the female anatomy with his "The all stinking eye" and his jab at lesbians with "Why do all these lesbians complain all the time, it's like they have a constant axe wound to grind", but Thai took it one further by making the off putting subject of HIV AIDS funny with his "I don't mind dating people with HIV, but when they come to my house and complain how messy it is, come on, I'm risking death and your whingeing about a little bit of mess". I didn't think much of Joel Creasey the first time I saw him but tonight he killed it. He does this little thing of doing background comments about his own jokes, and if the joke isn't funny the comments make it funny. Paul Warnes was solid as usual. Zack Adams did the musical comedy thing with the singing and playing guitar. Most of the people doing this have too many words in their songs so the jokes get lost, but Zack had enough puns to be good tonight. Lindsay Webb killed it, and then shredded it with a brilliant bit of clever audience participation add-libbing, that Craig Hill could learn a thing or two from Lindsey because Lindsey wasn't aggressively insulting the people he was questioning, but was rather apologetic and very funny. Jacques Barrett is always excellent with his over the top exaggerated characters and his clever mispronouncing of common words, tausch to you sir. Lastly the surprise of the night was Wil Anderson, mainly doing bits from his new show, and he produced a good finish. Unfortunately there was no time for a host so none of the comics got the applause at the end of their set, because the last task they did before leaving the stage was to introduce the next comic and get applause for them. It would have been nice to hear the applause because it gives me an indication of how well the audience thought the comic was. 4.5
14.10.10 : Sydney University Theatresports Grand Final!!! : Manning Bar - impro
Our host Steen Raskopoulos did an amazing tribute to Jordan McClellan, these speeches can be sad but this one was quite up lifting, he explained how special Jordan was to a crowd that really didn't have enough time to have found out what we knew. Even today I haven't see anyone like Jordan, on stage he could just turn on like a light switch, make things happen, and be very funny in an instant when things needed to be done. A trophy was designed with a dragon on top as a tribute to Jordan and him inventing the impro dragon game. James Colley was awarded the first Jordan McClellan bright new star trophy. James also is a bit similar in style to Jordan because he makes things happen as well.
Not that many scenes really grabbed me but the ones I liked were both of the commercials in a minute. One being a funny spoof, of a sophisticated avant garde advert, selling pink underpants golf-carts, that ended with passionate boy kissing, and secondly the very clever dynamic love potion hamburger. Even though none of the cast knew the Rocky film in classic in a minute, it was still funny to see them try to work it out from the limited clues they were given. The genré shared story in a pet shop was good. The speaking in one voice was done well with both players speaking quite quickly, something not seen that often, it had good skills even thought the story was just nice. The triggers with hidden endowments always works a treat here, and tonight was no exception. I thought the 2 man team The Venga Girls punched above their weight but didn't get the points they deserved, that's the judges for you, and the great response from the crowd to their crime endowments scene just proved it. The fish market replay with the ridiculous prompts of Smurf and 6 foot 5 inches was good. The Facebook breakup scene struck a cord with the young crowd and was very funny when the boy was murdered at the end for his callousness. The guide replaying the movie Anus Magillicutty 2003 was also funny when they made extra use of the main characters name with bum jokes. The Venga Girls very difficult backward scene, involving estranged brothers separated by a nuclear war, again wasn't rewarded adequately. And the final ultimate roller-coaster in a barbershop was good. On a sad note Jeremy Yao decided to retire from impro. I have seen him around for years and he has been a valuable team leader of late because of his experience. It's a shame as he is a great example for young players to learn from because he started in the era of a more technical style of impro.
For me I had big problem. I can hear fine if someone is talking on their own but because I hadn't counted on so many people turning up the background noise from people talking nearby had me struggling, I actually couldn't hear half of the show. The show felt like it started well, had a lull in the middle, and recovered at the end. I thought everybody was solid and the show was nice, but it just felt like it was missing that quirky brilliance that I expected, like 2 years ago where they did 2 challenges simultaneously in one scene, or just those wacky way out ideas we usually see. In the parts where I was lost I started wondering that maybe because no one does much short form impro anymore maybe the experience level diminishing. In the old days short form was done 12 months a year but now it's only done for a bit over one month per year. The big plus with these new players is what they lack in technical skills they easily make up for with ideas, but tonight most of the ideas were more nice than brilliant. I'm only comparing what I'm seeing to what I have seen so my opinion doesn't really matter that much because the audience enjoyed it a lot. I think short form has more appeal for audiences because the scenes are short, so there is a greater chance of keeping their attention, the players only need a couple of jokes and one punchline at the end to make it funny, and the constant asking the audience for suggestions keeps them involved. And boy did this crowd liked to get involved with crazy suggestions that just made the night more fun for them. I had troubles so it was only nice for me but the crowd had fun and sounded around 4-4.5
13.10.10 : Story Club and Don't Look Down : Hermann's Bar
Out of all the styles of shows from Project 52 Story Club has been the most consistently good, and tonight was no exception. We started with our usual host Ben Jenkins telling us a story that should be renamed Lemony Benkins A Series of Unfortunate Events. It entailed a not so gracious host of a party that had him sleeping in his car, when somewhat poisoned by the insidious Jack of Daniels, when a errant van slammed into it and pretzeled his pride and joy, while, as you would expect when sleeping on the street, being naked in the back seat. The comedy of errors concluded in a very strange manner when the truth was revealed. It was a good story that again had that Jenkins magic of embellished reality.
James Colley's piece was an ode to his father and the embarrassment he caused him at the age of 7 by behaving oddly in public while being escorted by his father. To the extent of running away from his father screaming STRANGER DANGER because he did not recognise him after he shaved his beard off, and climbing a tall climbing maze type slide in a shopping centre only to discovering his new found fear of heights, prompted his poor unfortunately dad into traversing the small passageways to rescue his very loud and screaming offspring.
Pat Magee came out with a bang by threatening to punch us in the face in the blisteringly funny continuing story of Captain Frances Lewellynton Syphilis Magee. It has been a while since we left this rapscallion and cad floating high in his escaping hot air balloon, so it was of no surprise that we find him causing trouble in the South American country of Donkey Kong with his faithful Seagull King. He went there with the expressed purpose of killing non existent vampires but somehow ended up dogfighting pterodactyls. This series reminds me of the radio plays on the old Double J. Firstly with The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy in 1978 that was very popular. Hitchhikers delivered concepts, that we knew weren't true, logically, so it felt real. The few jokes that were in the series were humorous but it was the unreal believable facts that captured your imagination. The second was also a sci-fi adventure series written by one of the DJ at the station a couple of years latter, it consisted of small sections of dialogue punctuated by long ambient music. I found it not that interesting because the dialogue was just absurd line after absurd line, making it too nonsensical to be coherent and story like. Pat's stories tread the line between both styles by making the nonsensical logical, which makes it very funny.
Alexandra Plim pushed the boundaries of Story Club, with the help of the sound scape maestro Tom Lowndes, to produced a semi performance piece of a story with sound effects. The story started near closing time at a children's clothing shop where some late arrivals threaten to keep our shop-keep past her allotted time. Things went astray when the shop-keep murders one of the late comers and is sent to hell. The story would have been nice on it's own but with the added sound effects it just added to tension and drama, which accelerated the viewers emotions to fever pitch and making the whole performance very good.
Chloe O'Toole wasn't happy to follow such a stunning performance, but it didn't matter because she also had some tricks up her sleeve. The story was about the Ninja cats and their conspiracy to destroy her perfect day, and her immaculate white tee shirt. The twist at the end had the offending item demonstrated with added scripted comments from the back about what people might has said about it during the day. This story was also good.
Prof Mahmoud ibn Daud aka Dave Bloustien put together with a very funny, if slightly crude, story about the Pharaohs penis called The Mummy's Cock. He played a professor from the Cairo museum, all with a non specific Egyptian accent, in another semi performance piece. Dave's stuff is usually humorous but this one was laugh out loud funny with strategic puns all the way. It was very good and feels like it could be a new show that he could write if he can get enough funny characters and puns together. Maybe something along the lines of the 7 Faces of Dr. Lao.
Geoff Lemon's story was about a rendezvous in Buenos Aires that was more for the young people, because it was delivered in spoken word, hip-hop, poetry style. I get lost in the rhythm of the delivery and forget to listen to the words, especially when the words are so tightly packed. When I was young and working on the construction of Australia's Wonderland we were forced to go to a special poetry show for us. The audience was tradesmen, who weren't keen on going, but we went anyway to have a break and be paid for it. I don't know who the poet was but he used everyday subjects, that even we could relate to, and delivery it with pauses and accentuations, rather than the constant delivery of words, and because of the slower delivery it gave you time to process the words. It was more like rhyming stories without that much of the rhythmic delivery. This appealed to everyone in the end making it quite enjoyable. Even though Geoff wasn't for me the rest of the audience really enjoyed it.
Zoe Norton Lodge again delivered another very good story in that dramatic Zoe style, her delivery nearly makes this a performance piece as well. It was a hilarious story about her first acting audition for a creepy fat guy living alone in the boondocks. Things turned for the worst when she started reading the script and quickly came to the conclusion that the script was sounding more like a perverted sexual fantasy than a play. Zoe actually read out some of the demented sadomasochistic script as a example of the creepy fat guy's mind set. This was further compounded when the rehearsal would last 12 months with no venue booked and the creepy fat guy playing the lead. Luckily she bid a hasty retreat and never went there again. Overall the night was very good, as usual. 4.5
Unfortunately there was some puns made at Jeremy Yao tonight and I hope it didn't prompt his retirement the next day because he is still an all round fun guy with much to offer.
12.10.10 : Craig Hill(SCO) : Comedy Store
I was a bit worried he was going to be a one joke stereotype, and unfortunately my fears proved to be right when he kind of was. Stereotypes are funny but if that's all you've got and you just keep shovelling it out ad nauseum it gets boring. It's like watching the TV show The Nanny where the only joke is the Jewish angle. 90% of his routine was improvised audience stuff, and the improvised stuff wasn't clever or funny, and was even quite vitriolic. He chose all the easy ways out with the audiences answers to his questions, like the "I'll pretend I didn't understand what you said so you end up looking like a retard stuff", even though everyone in the room understood it perfectly. The audience cheered at the end but I don't know why because the lack of actual material made it a drag, glad I didn't pay the big dollars for his show when he was here at the start of the year. The supports were good, even though most were numerous repeats for me, with John Cruikshank being a bit of a surprise and quite funny with his new well sorted routine. 3
10.10.10 : Theatresports Cranston Cup - Heat # 3 : Factory Theatre -impro
It was all just a bit uninspiring, going through the motions stuff, so much so that I just don't have that much to write about. The first genuine laugh was the last scene in the first half where one player from the Bavaria’s Wurst team kept exposing her cleavage, with the usually goggle-eyed response from her male team mates, and the audience. They again tuned up the smut with a rude twister scene, and again got laughs with their Shakespearian scene. It wasn't as bad as I'm indicating, as the audience was amused, but no spark for me. 3
09.10.10 : Panic by Improbable: SOH
Well I was bored and I had cheap tickets so what the hell. I was a bit um-ming and ah-hing because the blurb on the flyer doesn't mean anything, like all fringe show flyers, but it was supposed to have some impro, even though it actually didn't seem to have any except a for few comments at times. So what was the show about. Well it looked like real life with symbolic scenes, and like all symbolic theatre it's up to the individuals interpretation, so it is what you think it is. Being very left hemisphere dominant I mainly see logical reasoning so artistic interpretation doesn't really grab me, I look more at how they did an effect rather than what it means. I never took much notice in High School English when we had to interpret the lyrics in songs so my interpretation of what happened may be flawed. It felt like bits of the life of a middle aged man who wrote of this show, with surreal and symbolic scenes to set the emotion. We started with him thinking he was the sexual active and dominant God Pan, doing to his Nymphs what he liked. I thought the main character was a bit self indulgent by surrounding himself with girls for the sake of his ego but on reflection it was probably a depiction of what is built into men's thinking, from evolution rather than conscience thought, regarding their sexual prowess. But the next scene depicted man's sexual frustration when Pan came out with huge erect member, the only very funny scene in the show, and no Nymphs in sight. We are then whisked into the writers apartment in Brixton and the bookshelves covering the walls with thousands of self-help books, which indicated his insecurity by trying to get help in working out his life. This sexual fantasy and fact chopped and changed through the 90 minute show with him telling about the illnesses he suffered, middle aged reminiscing of past girls loved, confusion, etc, and these being punctuated by a middle aged man's symbolic sexual fantasy. This is symbolic interpretation stuff and not many laughs is not my schtick, so it wasn't for me, but I did overhear some girls leaving the show saying it was good. 2.5
08.10.10 : Pink Ladies - Women Make it Up : Roxbury Hotel - impro
This mockumentary started with an American documentary maker character introducing her latest film. Next the players would play out short scenes about their lives. On rare occasions she would question the characters directly for an immediate response, but 3 times during the show she would steer the responses in a certain direction, as an example she would ask what were their thoughts on what they would like to achieve ambition wise, etc. We had an explorer who wrote a book about her Kenyan experiences that ended up being a mental patient in a padded cell imagining the whole thing. We had a kleptomaniac who got caught and sent to prison and eventually released, and a girl that thought that touching someone was sex, and on discovery of what sex actually was, became a nun who ended up running amok. I mainly went to see Jane Simmons, because she is usually very funny, and she was rather nice, but for me it was the rarely see Louise McManus who stole the show by yucking it up and making all her scenes funny. 3.5
Unfortunately the show Scared Scriptless, before this one, had veteran players in it but it wasn't advertised so I didn't know and missed out.
06.10.10 : Project 52's Gala to End All Galas (Read: Draculas) : Hermann's Bar
This show presented all the reject ideas that have accumulated by the various writers, and lets them put them forward for the audience to decide. We found out it's actually a lot of work to keep coming up with ideas so most get through, because they are hard to come by, but even with that low a threshold some have to get chopped, and that's what we saw tonight. Some of the stuff was actually performed but most of it was pitched at us, like you would do to an executive, to gauge a reaction. Unfortunately for the pitchee's the people that poo poo-d the ideas in the first place had a second chance to ridicule their ideas by putting in sarcastic comments during the pitch. I think I was expecting a little too much, they are the rejects after all, but I kind of thought that they would be so ridiculous that they would be cool, but after their viewing I think we can all agree they were deservedly rated. I did like Ryan Withers musical Wickhead that was preposterously subtly stupid brilliant, and was the funniest on the night. The big finish, Lloyd the Musical, was nice. Necromantic Comedy was too bizarre for me to really laugh at but was still nice. In the end the show didn't really grab me, but then again it's not really intended for me, the intended audience seemed to think it was ok. I wasn't bored I just didn't laugh that much, and it didn't help that I didn't bring glasses so couldn't see nor could I hear that well. The audience laughed more at the front of the room than the back but on average they sounded around 3.5
05.10.10 : Comedy Debate - Alumni vs Students! ‘Shakespeare would have Tweeted’ : Great Hall Sydney Uni
I'm not a fan of serious debates but comedy ones I can handle, so for something new I tried a live one. I was hoping the podcast would be out before I wrote this so I could have a re-listen and try to surmise each speakers point of view, but unfortunately it didn't arrive in time. The reason I needed a re-listen was because the actual debate chopped and changed so much I can't even remember what angle each speaker took, not that any seemed to have one direction they were coming from anyway. I found it was more civilised verbal boxing match rather than rational logic, and that's what made in funny. Some speakers totally abandoned the question and just ripped into the opposition for their whole slot, like Pat Bateman. Pat knew this ship was going down before it started, because he has been on the end of the Alumni's unbeatable winning streak so many times, so he just said stuff it and hoed into the opposition with no mention of Shakespeare at all. Probably a good strategy to try and out entertaining them. Pat was the funniest of the night but very close behind was the Vice-Chancellor of USyd. The Vicey rebutted some points but again mainly attacked the students, and the bagging didn't stop there because he even bagged his own team mate. I don't really find Adam Spencer that funny most of the times but tonight he was fairly good, just not as good as the other two. I think he, Alex Lee, and Ben Jenkins were all pretty close with only his celebrity status getting him slightly ahead. Now lets get to the facts. 1 - I judge everything by the entertainment value, 2 - the Alumni were given the win, 3 - the students got a touch more actual laughs, so by Ipso facto QED boolean logic, more laughs is more entertaining. If it was based on logic the Alumni were a touch more coherent in delivery, for the few times actual reasoning was discussed, but they also didn't seem to put forward as many hypothesis. The result seemed more like the last speaker was Adam Spencer and the audience of mainly older people like celebrities better. I don't know why there was no final comment by the captains, like in all debates, because it might have negated the celebrity appeal. I would have called it a draw. 3.5-4
Comedy Debate - Alumni vs Students! ‘Shakespeare would have Tweeted’ Podcast
http://sydney.edu.au/podcasts/2010/shakespeare_would_have_tweeted.mp3
03.10.10 : Theatresports Cranston Cup - Heat # 1 : Factory Theatre - impro
This year there is 2 heats per Sunday making over 5 hours of impro in one day, which it too much for me, so I'm picking the one that I think has the best players. Heat 1 looked like it had 2 good teams, one nice, and I was pretty close except one of the teams that I though would be good ended nice and the nice team ended up good so we ended up with 3 teams worth watching, which is one more than normal. The twist for this year is that the team that brings the most supporters gets a bonus 5 points. 5 points is a lot of points and seems impossible to chase down so we will have to see how that pans out because you don't want a less entertaining team getting in the final just on bonus points, but then again I find nearly all the teams fold from stage fright in the final. I expected the veteran team Improvised Explosive Devisors to be good with their very experienced players, but they were a bit up and down. Their rookie player is an experienced stand-up comic but new to impro, and the veteran players always seemed to use him as the main player, and because he is new sometimes he just doesn't know enough tricks to finagle a way around a problem. The one problem he had was that he was given the secret characteristic that he was gay, which the veterans off stage had to guess, but when they also came back as gay characters he didn't know what to do. Other than that only mistake he was good and will learn from it. I found that their typewriter scene about brothers and their noodle opera was the best but overall they were solid but not that inspiring, they were probably having a bad day because they do have talent. The French Army were new to me, except for their captain, and were rather good, and coupled with their 5 point head start they were too far ahead to chase down. Their Glee in a minute, Bing Lee accent roller-coaster, and their date scene were good. Their scene with one character only using lines from a book was not technically correct, initially. The other characters have to justify each line no matter how stupid, rather than dismiss them as being crazy, but to be fair he was reading them out fairly quickly and they weren't that related to each other, but they did sort it out by half way. Their last scene turned serious, which isn't my favourite because if I want serious I have my life, but it had a big twist at the end that had the audience gasping and they received maximum points for it. Team Steen, someone's got to do something about that name, started like a scolded rats and just got better. Their Sign language interpreter was probably their weakest being only good. Their Bunnings love story, and Carlo getting in everyone's face in the office scene, by invading their personal space, was great. Their Fake Uncle, with the son taking everything literally, was excellent because Carlo milked it by pulling out every stupid colourful saying that he could find, that had the son in a tizzy. Their O-Week scene was very funny but it was their last scene that had me laughing at impro like the old times. They got two young boys from the audience that were prompted for words in the Tibet mountain scene. This scene can easily go wrong because the word suggestions are usually crap, and with two young boys you would expect most to be crap, or inappropriate, but Carlo turned everything around by expertly using the crap and made the whole thing ridiculously funny, it shows that what you do with a suggestion is the most important thing. In the old days the impro seemed very intelligent, like academics were doing it, that made it clever humour and very funny, and it was the clever scenes that the audience and I found funniest, like Carlos clever fake uncle sayings and his cleverly using crude suggestions in the Tibet scene. The last scene was a 5 on it's own but overall between 4-4.5
02.10.10 : Jacques Barrett : Laugh Garage Syd
JJ Mullard (UK) was the host. I liked him the first time I saw him with that rapid delivery, but that pun type humour doesn't seem to stand up that well on repeat listening especially if it's stretched, but because I haven't seen him lately he was still ok. Martin Henchion (IRE) came via Wollongong and Port Kembla and told mainly of bogans from the area. He did some very funny bogan accents and stereotypes, and coming from an Irishman it was even funnier. Half his stuff is nice and half is good, and because the material is new to me I found it rather funny. Paul Warnes was introduced as a Laugh Garage regular, and I was a bit worried that crowd and I wouldn't find it that funny because of the repeats, but I was wrong and it was funny again. Jacques Barrett was last up and I knew he was going to be good but I think it caught the crowd by surprise because they cheered loudly at the end because it was so funny. Even though it was a recent repeat for me I haven't heard the full routine in a while so I still liked it. 4
02.10.10 : Wit Large #2 - travel : Gleebooks
I can't remember how I found Lou Sanz. - Stories and Stuff but I joined the group. Then I saw her on Raw Comedy and thought she was good so I was very interested to see her live, and is actually why I went to this show. I wasn't expecting much of Wit Large @ Gleebooks, how good can comedy be in a book store, but the room was fairly large and I don't know if it was Wil Anderson or what but a lot of people turned up, probably around 80, and with more people the show becomes funnier, even though they are that reserved inner city crowd. The theme of the night was Travel and we started out with our host Dave Bloustien mainly doing bits from his trip to South Africa show, Beastly. For me I knew the stuff so it was nice but I felt the crowd liked it more. Next was Sam Bowring doing a whole new routine of him travelling to some Pacific Island with his buddies, but unfortunately with no single female tourists turning up. I have heard tiny snippets of this material in his other routine, but they felt like he was still working on them so they weren't that great, but tonight he had the whole thing put together and it was quit good with the crowd also loving it. On Lou Sanz Facebook group she sends you stories she has written and categorises herself as a writer/stand-up, but I think it should be the other way around because I found she was more a stand-up with stories, something like Story Club but with all the physical actions and delivery of stand-up. Her set was her memoir-in-progress, because she is only 20, and it was about her writing and selling her screenplay to Hollywood at the age of 18. She had to travel over there to see some big wigs and as you would expect meet some weirdos, a common occurrence in such a fake city, people like a racist pimp cowboy. Unfortunately her set was only 10 minutes so there wasn't much time for details, but it was still delightful, but with laughs. Usually when I judge someone delightful it's mainly warm fuzzy smile type chuckle humour but Lou's stand-up stuff is funny enough that I actually laughed. Lastly was Wil Anderson, and he must have seen Lou's bit because he said he was going to ad-lib his memoirs from audience questions for the next 30 minutes, and call it Wilopedia. First up was a question from a youngish woman asking "How did you lose your virginity?", I though women were more subtle than this baseball bat to the face question but Wil being Wil just batted it straight back and told a story about him and a girl on a futon. The story didn't end on a high, like most first times, and thankfully there were no squishy details, but getting there that Wil way is what was good. There was 2 travel stories, mainly about taking drugs to relive the boredom in hotel rooms. And also a story about why he became a stand-up, with him saying it was easier than actual work. Like the time when he had to work on his folks farm and milk cows, and purposely let a cow relive herself on him when he was young, just to get some warmth on a cold day. Unfortunately he didn't factor in all the scenarios and it ended badly. At the start I was kind of thinking, "Yeah Will Anderson again, Whatever" but because it was all new stuff for me it was also good. Overall 4
01.10.10 : Dinner for Schmucks - movie
Comedy : For a guy to get a promotion he must turn up to a special dinner of idiots with the biggest schmuck. When I saw the preview I thought only schmucks would go to see this because it looked so unfunny, so being a schmuck I went, and I wasn't exactly right but then again I wasn't exactly wrong. Steve Carell other movies Get Smart and Date Night I found tedious and just wanted to leave, but this one I didn't. It wasn't blistering but neither was it chew your arm off mind numbing, so it was kind of ok and watchable for me. There were annoying parts like Steve's character which seemed too try hard to get laughs, so some of the stuff felt contrived, and there was also some non relatable predictable stunts put in to fill the time, and hopefully get laughs, but you could put up with them. What will surprise you is all the cameo's of TV series comedians like, Flight of the Concords, Little Britain, and the It Crowd. Not a disaster 3-3.5
29.09.10 : Make War for Ducklings - An Original Sketch Comedy Tank : Hermann's Bar - sketch
Out of all the sketch I have seen really only 3 shows have grabbed me, and even though this wasn't blistering, only blistering excites me these days, it was still entertaining. The laugh value was on the same level as most of the Uni Reviews that that have come out recently so there was nothing to complain about. The standout skits were the "Pick it up"(at gun point). This was a skit Steen and Carlo developed from a Impro scene they did a while ago, and this callback made it extra funny for me, but even without the callback it works well so the audience also found it very funny. The Jack and the Beanstalk one with Jack berating his mother for scolding him when he exchanged a cow for beans, because he now had golden eggs from of it, was clever because it looked at things from a different perspective. The Champagne scene was played like a trendy avant garde sexy French champagne commercial with bare chested boys seductively promoting it's sexiness. Unfortunately Carlo got champagne in his eyes and went blind but this just added to the hilarity with the overly exaggerated characters that made this the funniest one of the night. The duet with Aladdin and Princess Jasmine singing "A Whole New World" had Carlo taking it overboard when he latched onto one line in the song. The song sets the scene with them flying high on a magic carpet with beautiful sights, but when he got to the line "Don't you dare close your eyes" he took it literally and vehemently warned Princess Jasmine, in that crazy exaggerated arguing that he does so well, if she shouldn't dare to close her eyes at such a poignant moment. Other good ones were the "Single and Loving it", the mispronounced Yogurt, the clever "Arguing Crusty Cops" that were actually agreeing with each other and being proper even though their tone was aggressive and sounded otherwise. Eugene being mistaken for Eugenics was not very PC but was funny. The Fire Drill was simple yet funny even though it was very inappropriate. The poetry slam was short and simple but the crowd liked the physical humour. Other skits that weren't that funny for me but worth a mention was, Ted the Notre Dame Hunchback, Whales Going to the Beach was a slow burner, Carlos Reygadas the famous El Salvador explorer was weird, the last 2 elephants, and the Jenga architect. For me around 3.5-4 but the crowd is usually 0.5 point higher.
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28.09.10 : Ava Vidal(UK) : Comedy Store
We had the regulars with Matt Okine hosting and being ok, Mikey Mileos using a slow delivery on his new stuff which made him average, and Ray Badran was in his usual form and was quite good. The secret American guest was Jamie Kilstein and he did his usual controversial subject matter like, politics, religion, terrorism, homophobia, etc, basically all the serious stuff. He was ok but it was like he took a line of speed before the show because he tried to cram his 1 hour show into 10 minutes. He just spoke so fast everyone laughed because of the speed of the dialogue rather than anything that was funny, because you just couldn't get the ideas coherent in your head in the time allowed to actually know if it was humorous. His longer shows are better. The first thing that strikes you about Ava Vidal is that she is like a adult teenager. Even though she looks young she has children, with the eldest being 15 year old, and you would think because of it she was a responsible adult, but most of her stories were about her acting much more like an irresponsible teenager, with drinking and sex. Her background includes being a teenage single mum, a prison officer, and a victim of domestic abuse so there is fresh view points that most of the audience will be surprised with. She just came here from South Africa and did some bits about racism there and back at home but it's not delivered with rhetoric so it still is amusing. I thought she was delightful all the way and I didn't lose concentration once, unlike Jamie where I drifted, so she ended up quite nice, 3.5-4, but the other parts of the show was a bit of a let down so overall the night was a 3.5
26.09.10 : Easy A - movie
Comedy, Drama, Romance : A girl gets noticed when she doesn't deny a lie. She then helps a friend out with another lie that starts the rumour mill. Delightful all the way and some laughs. 4
25.09.10 : The Hideous Demise of Detective Slate : Factory Theatre
The show is a film noir parody live radio show, but rather than just standing behind microphones they did as much acting as possible with the limitations of not having full sets and limited space due to the large cast always being on stage waiting for their bit. The mood was set by a 5 piece jazz band with horns that mainly played background music to give the scenes feel, but on occasions they would play loudly to accentuate the drama which unfortunately drowned out the dialogue. There was also had an expert sound guy filling in all the extra sounds. Every character was good and accentuated all the stereotypes, clichés, and accents that are associated with the characters well, and the show was tight and exciting, but it in the end it just didn't grab me and I only smiled a few times. The main character was pumping out metaphors and similes at a prodigiously rate, but half of them just didn't make scenes like, "He moved like a Jew wearing a frog". Maybe they were supposed to be nonsense so that it would surprise you with it's ridiculousness, or maybe the guy talked so fast you didn't have time to get them, or maybe they were very clever and I was just too slow to get them, I don't really know. But a few of them did stick and were good like, " I rather play Jenga with a 9/11 victim", but even that one took precious seconds to comprehend in the fast paced dialogue. Even though it was a 3 for me, maybe I needed more coffee, the crowd chuckled in places, and by their applause sounded like it was around a 3.5-4.
24.09.10 : The Viagra Monologues : New Theatre, Newtown
The name sucked me into this one, and it wasn't blistering, but at least it wasn't crap. There was 5 characters each telling a monologue about their lives or part of their lives. There was the owner/barman, and a small group patrons from a bucks night, that entered just before closing time. The group consisted of a divorced father getting remarried, hence the bucks night, his son, the stripper, and her driver/bodyguard. I found the stories from the younger characters interesting but not the stories from the older characters. In their blurb they say "The Viagra Monologues challenges stereotypes", well not really, because some of the characters seemed like stereotypes their stories sounded kind of familiar, especially for the older 2 characters. It wasn't a sexy romp through the private lives of deviants, but more like life and some relationship stories, with hardly any sexy stuff. It was still ok. 3.5
23.09.10 : A Germ of an Idea : Factory Theatre
The brief looked like it was going to be some science based humour, therefore should be interesting for me, and it was, initially. In fact it was quite good at the start with a German professor with a large beehive hairdo telling us about germs and unlikely places we can pickup germs that even had the audience question whether their practices were clean enough. There was a slide-show, audience participation, making this whole section clever and exciting. We had a video of a 50's housewife sending up the love of chemicals at the time that was also funny. After that 15 minute section we we waited for a doctor character, as we were told by the professor, but instead got an ocker waste disposal expert, and this is where they show became uninteresting. It was practically a monologue with him talking on the phone to his mother, who wanted him to go speed dating, and Phillip, who wanted him dispose of something dodgy. The last of the 3 characters was the 50's housewife that just waffled on with nothing that interesting. Started 4 and quickly went to 2.5.
22.09.10 : Full Body Contact No Love Junior Tennis Academy : Hermann's Bar - impro
This week we had Alex Lee hosting and doing a nice job. The first team doing 12 minutes of long form impro were very good with constant laughs throughout. With the prompt of whale they Kirk Douglas-ed a Whale of a Tale about Ishmael chasing the whale that stole his love, initially in the form of a crazy narration with Jeremy Yao playing out Ishmael. But due to Ishmael not being able to fund the mission his First Mate is sent to acquire the dubious loan from the oblivious bank manager. Meanwhile Ishmael's lover is stuck with the whale and his boring blow-hole conversation. Back to the newly acquired vessel "The Battlestar Galactic" Ishmael spots a pod of whales and sets chase, but during the chase Ishmael's inner dialogue told us that he loved the whale and not his lost lover, and there was also a flash back to his tragic youth of him harpooning his parents. He finally catches the whale and leaves with it in humpback heaven. The crazy statement of the scene was "My blow-hole negates all arguments".
The second team did A.D.D impro with scenes chopping and changing at a rate to fast for old people like me, but it still had some moments. Their prompt was radar detector, happy, and balloons. They started on a submarine with the sonar operator. In the submarine there was a basement with a trapped child and mother. Also on the sub were sheep, extensive gambling, balloons, and people shooting down balloons. Latter a father gives his daughter a surprise birthday present of a 23 year old adopted brother who wants to take over her room. She then becomes very angry and forces the father to take him back. Highlights were the statement "Do you know what helium does to a fragile ecosystem, it kills the sheep", and a actual flying tackle jump.
The third team was nice and they used the prompt of the Beatles song "Happiness is a Warm Gun". Carlo Ritchie & Nick Fischer brought their best angry characters when a boss chastises his employee(Wilkinson) about not typing fast enough and wasting time stroking his gun. He accidentally shoots Geraldine in the face which prompts the boss to nearly take his belt out. He ultimately breaks up with his fiancé when he rather stroke his gun than her. He rushes to the typewriter factory to get a typewriter to write a novel but is surprised to meet the evil Archduke that has invented the Top Lap that will put Wilkinson out of a job. He goes on to fulfil the Archduke's typings and kills the President and gets framed for smallpox.
Lastly was the big 40 minute block with Steen & Jordan Raskopoulos doing Detectives, Brokeback Mountain, and Sparta. They started with the Chief and the very gay and camp Broderick trying to solve their first case, and at the end of the scene Jordan was heard to say "I'm really interested how's he going to play the Brokeback mountain scene", which got good laughs when you realised the cowboys were gay. They get a case when a squirrel calls(making fun of Jordan's squeaky telephone message) where they go to the forest to see a body. Next in Sparta every character shouts everything, even the bleeding obvious, with the women being more manly than the men. Thessalonias(later called sh*t head) returns from war and quickly goes on another quest to find his brother in-law, Xenophobias. In the forest 2 cowboys are cooking a wombat on a spit-roast when they both simultaneously add to the story and talk over each other, which prompts Jordan to comment out aloud "Don't block the offer"(a rule in impro) that got good laughs. One cowboy runs into the detective and notes that the body has a tattoo and a helmet. Thessalonias arrives and confirms he is a Persian Prince from the 694 unit and goes in search of them to find his brother in-law. At the Persian lair Xenophobias is held captive by a hysterical Persian that makes him sing a song for a biscuit. This is where they had to play more than 2 characters at once and so eventually adopted the technique of the impro troupe Scratch, Scratch do a well defined clap or tag and a fast spin to clearly define a character change, in fact they couldn't even wait for each to do their own characters so they even started doing each others characters. Thessalonias kills the bees and with the help of the cowboys and the detectives they finally rescue Xenophobias. Compared to the others for me it was a overall 4, but again the crowd were closer to 4.5
21.09.10 : Full Body Contact No Love Tennis - Roxbury Hotel - impro
With such a strong lineup it would be silly to miss this show so I went, and it was what I expected, good. The first team that alternated with the second team was Cale Bain & Steve Lynch. Usually team players help each other so that they compliment each other, but on some occasions one player will try to dominate the other and get them to do stuff they don't want to, and that's what Cale tried to do to Steve. But Steve is way too experienced, smart, and fast to fall for such tricks and gave it back with interest that made the scenes a contest of wits. Steve has always run with the best and is no push over, even though that baby face says other wise, once he was sent by Miss Jane Simmons to the exit doors at the Belvoir Theatre and had to personally apologise to every individual in the 300 strong audience, while they were leaving, for being so naughty on stage, so games like this will never phase him. The contest started with Steve in a car-wash when Cale pulled up along side on a moped. Steve tried to talk to the mysterious moped but Cale said it couldn't understand English, but only Moped, and therefore couldn't answer him, but later when Cale actually talked to the moped in English Steve caught him out. The contest continued at the gates of heaven with d__k jokes like the vagina smacker, and even further with the body parts scene. Cale came out selling body parts but Steve didn't come out so Cale went away. Then Steve came out selling emotions and that's when Cale returned but selling personalities. Steve ask him why he wasn't selling body parts anymore and Cale replied that no one wanted to buy them because nobody came out on stage. Steve assured him there would be a buyer next time so they both left the stage with Cale returning selling body parts, but again Steve just left him hanging on the stage by himself with still nobody buying his body parts. Steve eventually came to the party, but as a disembodied voice, so again left Cale on the stage alone. Eventually things came together in the end and they worked together. Dave Bloustien & Amanda Buckley resurrected half of their first Cranston Cup team called the Mimes of Passion, minuses the cute white gloves, and formed the second team. They were delightful all night and complimented each other. Their first scene was with a kind of stalker/lover one, with him doing doodles on coasters of the girl he secretly admired. They both came up with good characters but Miss Amanda always take hers to the limit with hers always being like a Oscar winning performance. She uses exaggerated attributes, contradicting inner-monologues, crazy accents, etc, basically everything that makes the character super funny and entertaining. Next was an internet conversation with the bald older Mr Simpson talking to Karen, with her getting him to meet her at the park. Dave, who played Mr Simpson, was hamming up all the old out of date references like him printing out a crude drawing of Karen on of his old traction feed dot matrix printer. They finished on the super cute detective Jellyfish, in a Film Noir, that was sent on a case by the ditzy Miss Shark to find out what the scuba divers were doing. He accidentally kills the diver and finds out Miss Shark is a dolphin in disguise.
The second half started with Steen Raskopoulos & Grant Davies doing a straight 19 minute scene. It was more like a couple of friends mucking about more than anything substantial, but it was funny. It was set in a bathroom with Grant checking out a spot on his neck when Steen came in trying to use the bathroom. Steen got impatient and backhanded Grant in the nuts, I think Grant was just as surprised as us because of the expression on his face when he clutched his privates. In traditional impro there has rarely been physical contact, and most that is done is fake contact like slapping someone in the face but actually slapping your other hand in front of the other persons face so it sounds like a slap, or a stage kiss where you place your hand over the other players mouth and kiss the back of your hand. It's mainly the new Uni crowd that actually does full contact, like boy on boy full mouth kissing, and now nut slapping. And to take it further Steen slapped him twice more. That's when Steen knew he was in trouble and had to protect his nuts all through the second half, but Grant made him put his hands behind his head at the end and he got a more courteous soft slap. The last all-in was a rent collector trying to get the rent from a Greek household while they were watching Deal or No Deal. The householder kept saying No Deal to the rent so the SWAT team was sent in, but they were coerced by the Greek food. 4
17.09.10 : The Other Guys - movie
Action, Comedy, Crime : One lame cop and a gung-ho lame cop finally go on an actual case to chase crooks. It didn't have as many laughs as I was led to believe by the reviewers, in fact there was only 2 big laughs at the start and the others were only chuckly. 3
17.09.10 : Zoe & Penny's Very Short Attention Span : Newtown Theatre
The description for Fringe shows are very confusing, if you want to know what you are going to get, but I saw the word sketch comedy and thought it would be ok and it was. It started with a very clever and extremely funny skit about a pair of inappropriate nuns who were looking after orphans and taking weed. It was an impressive start and even though as the show continued the laughs tapered it was still entertaining, so much so that the 45 minutes rushed past so fast I couldn't believe it had finished but thought that the lights coming on was just an intermission. There was only 5 sketches that included a street wise motivational speaker telling us how to insult annoying people and get them to give you money, then a woman that had escaped from a religious cult that worshipped the microwave, a Scottish derelict hassling a girl, and they finished on a pair of indie alternative singers from the inner city doing 3 songs, one being Eat a Twisties lie down and die, and another being the Shit song.. Even though you didn't laugh all the time it was still delightful and I liked it. 3.5-4
17.09.10 : The Sorcerer's Apprentice - movie
Action, Adventure, Family : As the title suggests it's a nerd that tries to become a sorcerer. There is also a background story that presents a quest to be completed so there is more to it than just that, unfortunately it is delivered as a narration at the start like a video game so you don't pay much attention to the rambling. It is mainly action with a modest story, unlike The Last of the Air Benders which is more story than action. It was done in that Hollywood style that guarantees success but will feel familiar to some, and even with it's faults it is still entertaining. 4
16.09.10 : Sexy Tales of Palaeontology : Factory Theatre
The girl behind me, that was laughing all the way through, said afterward, "What just happened", and that about sums it up. It was bizarre abstract concepts strung together by nonsense. The scenes were related to each other only by a theme rather than logic and all the dialogue had nonsense in it for the sake of nonsense rather than for a reason. The story, if you could call it a story, started with the head geologist talking to her assistant when he is shot. He comes back to life as an evil henchman that adjudicates a debate between the geologist and a palaeontologist. The palaeontologist wins thereby causing the geologist to lose her job and be cast out. Meanwhile an evil agent from Bona-fide Corporation funds a scientist to manufacture a killbot, but when the killbot doesn't want to kill on demand the scientist is killed. That's just the start, and it make sense in this synopsis, but actually being there it is very higgledy piggledy and random, probably because of the nonsense dialogue and the bizarre offshoots to the story. Like the lady that sells coloured beakers that she collects by chopping off the heads of the Beaker Faced Albatross birds, who then goes on to have sex with Matthew McConaughey with the baby being delivered by David Bowie Knife. I personally thought there was too much nonsense, so it wasn't that believable or relatable, and it just feels like it's easier to write non-coherent nonsense, so for me it just doesn't feel that clever. For me I think Full Body Contact No Love Junior Tennis does it better because the improvisers alternate between nonsense and reality, in a kind of a cycle, giving you something to latch on to because it feels more real, and it's that that makes it feel more clever. If you let yourself go and just accept what is happening you will probably like it, but for me it was mainly smile humour even though about a quarter of the audience were constantly laughing and probably half were smiling throughout. The science based craziness might appeal to an open minded free thinking crowd like a Uni crowd because they do something similar, like last years "The Return of SPACE/TIME: A Love Story" at Sydney Uni. 3.5
16.09.10 : The Last of the Air Benders - movie
Action, Adventure, Family : The world is divided into 4 kingdoms of Air, Earth, Water, and Fire, and are kept at peace by the supervision of the Avatar, until one day when he disappears. It's kind of an Asian fantasy adventure Hollywood mix that uses the best parts of both. It has the fresh ideas from the Asian side and the serious believable delivery that is a mark of American cinema. The CGI looked cool and the story constantly had elements added so it ended up quite a big story which kept your interest. Probably not enough action throughout for the really young, and probably too much fantasy for the old, but it wasn't dumbed down at all for adults so young adults should like it. I liked it. 4
15.09.10 : Hermann's Heroes present The Ghost of Eddie Murphy Live in Spooky Concert : Hermann's Bar
This room is very different to a conventional comedy show, in that the performers are the same demographic as the audience so they write the exact stuff that they will appreciate. But unfortunately for outsiders, like me, it sometimes doesn't click, probably because it's something I don't know much about or I'm just too old to think that way. Were not really supposed to give negative comments, because they are new to comedy and just trying stuff out, but I didn't find anyone that was bad, just some stuff not applicable to my demographic. Our usual host Michael Hing returned for another episode of the Hermann's Heroes and was again good. There is just something about that quick thinking fast talking style that makes even the non funny interesting, and coupled with those condescending sarcastic comments it gets laughs. James Colley was first up and told of when he was on a date. The girl though she was giving him a compliment by saying "You look like the Beast in Beauty and the Beast" but was actually insulting him. And also a story about when he laughed during a serious speech, because he wasn't paying attention, that had the whole audience stare at him. I find that he has this kind of exciting vibe, even though not everything is funny for me, and thought he was good, which the audience also agreed with by giving good applause. I had problems with Phillip Roser, not because he was bad but because of me being too old to get a lot of the Harry Potter and the last 3 Star Wars movie references. You kind of only remember the movies of your youth, like the first 3 Star Wars movies for me, and not the ones you see latter in life because they just wiz past and don't stick. He got my mind racing trying to link references, and I did somewhat, so I thought he was still nice. Vic Peters also wasn't really in my demographic so I found him just ok but the crowd liked him. I don't know what it is about Cyrus Bezyan but he feels like a natural at comedy. His first joke about comparing the movie Avatar to the movie The Black Forest had us confused initially but when he got to the clever punchline the room erupted. I found him good and he got a large cheer to prove it. It's always going to be difficult for Dom Romeo, because he comes from the outside world and is a different demographic, but I think he was nice, and his di*k joke got on side with the younger crowd, until the bad pun at the end. I can think of another tag but it's a bit too cruel. The rest of his routine was about on-line dating and prostitutes and wasn't that relevant to the young audience, so that part didn't stick, but when he came back to the sex parts with the Ron Jeremy porn stuff it appealed to them, and also the end of his open relation story. I think the delivery may be too happy for his appearance and maybe a darker less excited delivery may work better, like the older sarcastic American comics, might be worth a shot. Blake Mitchell was a lot better than he was on Sunday, the bigger crowd must have made him more enthusiastic because he was so much more animated. I found that he didn't explain the stunt that he did on the TV show Balls of Steel that well this time so the audience were a bit lost until they cotton on to what was happening. Other than that I though he was good. Alistair Wallace had some good stuff like the air guitar, and the imperial measurements for penis size. Nick Capper didn't do as well as on Sunday. He has good stuff that works but he doesn't put it all together so as to guarantee laughs but instead makes every gig different so it ends up unpredictable. I liked his wombat rabbit bit because it was so inappropriate and very groan worthy. Sid De also did Harry Potter stuff and something I knew nothing about, the Magic Bus book series, but was still nice and definitely more appropriate for the younger audience. Patrick Magee was mainly nice but finished on a high with his "Mary Sue" bit. A Mary Sue is a somewhat controversial device of using the author's own experience and opinions poured into a single character of something they have written. Like Jane Austin always writes about intelligent women that are writers that always get the best men. And when Pat used this device in a short story that he had written it brought the house down. It was so funny and educational as well. Overall for me around 3.5, 4 but the crowd were closer to 4 to 4.5.
14.09.10 : Moshe Kasher(USA) : Comedy Store
Jim Roachford was our host and he was ok but didn't go that hard. Michael Workman has his delivery down pat because he now gets consistently good laughs. Chris Wainhouse was very good. The second half started with Bruce Griffiths but because I had seen him recently and knew the punch lines I only chuckled in places. I don't know if it was me or what but I didn't laugh at all at Moshe Kasher. I don't even remember much about his set because my mind started drifting, which it didn't do for Bruce, so I probably didn't find the material that interesting. Even the 2 middle aged guys next to me didn't laugh even though they especially came to see him, but they did laugh for Michael and Chris. There was a lot of stuff about him looking gay but not actually being gay, and even though he is Jewish he didn't go over the top with the Jewish stereotype material that most do ad-nauseum. The crowd laughed consistently for all the acts but they cheered louder for the support acts. For me the first half was good but overall 3.5
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12.09.10 : HaHa Alternative Comedy : Roxbury Hotel
Unfortunately it wasn't anything special. The jokes were mild and the pros did short sets of new material. 3
11.09.10 : Science Revue Presents: Sherlock Ohms and Dr. Wattson : Seymour Centre
That was one big professional production. With a cast of probably over 70 people it was a very tight production with every avenue scoured to produce the most effect. There was heaps of costumes, good singing, good acting, and even though the actual laugh value wasn't that high all the other factors milked the best response from what they had. We started with the band, consisting of about 10 people half with horns, doing Europe's The Final Countdown, complete with kazoo solo. It was then followed by the main, electrical based, spoof of Sherlock Ohms, that was done in continuing sections throughout the show. Standouts were the acapella choir singing the send up of the Nintendo 64, to the tune of "When I'm 64", that got a huge cheer, and also their Shark(Jaws) and Blood song. James Colley absolutely milked the part of Oscar the Grouch to the max in his sketch, and got a huge cheer, and that was the theme of all the sketches with impeccable timing and delivery that made them more than just the joke. The police integration with heaps of very fast tongue twisters got a great response. The slap stick kick in the nuts sketches got good laughs, even though the last marriage one was so convincing that initially some people may have though it was real. Other good ones, that were also crude, were the goat lover at the gates of heaven, and the Bananas in Pyjamas bear molestation. There were also science based ones with Pythagoras steeling Pi(3.14159), the lab mice being experimented on, the very funny video about Time Travel deriding theoretical scientists, and the NASA monitoring the moon for Death Star substitution since 1969 video. There was funny voice overs promoting coming TV shows based on the Kraken. There was also the well executed X-Men send up, and the Harry Potter send up stating that he had only knew one spell, the Expelliarmus Disarming spell. Overall it was mainly smile type jokes, and the Sherlock Ohms spoof wasn't as clever as last years Orient Express spoof, but the singing and costumes and overall production was way ahead of the rest. 3.5-4
10.09.10 : What I Did for Love : Notes Newtown
Boy, did I misinterpret the brief. I thought this was going to be funny relationship stories but was instead a cabaret with relationships as the theme, oh well. It was my first time at Notes and the place is new and very nice with good vision of the stage from any vantage point. The first half, which was odd because they had a break in a 1 hour show, was mainly songs. Some were covers, mainly being love songs, and some were written to tell stories, like the bad boy story/song about her falling for what turned out to be a criminal, the uncaring tech savvy SMS boyfriend song, and other songs mainly about boys she has dated that were more like stereotypical jabs at boys. After breaking up with the boys came the aftermath, like her becoming a stalker by physically stalking them or using social networking to keep track of them. There was also the stereotypical hate for some of the boys and another song for the hate of the girl that stole her boy. The second half had more dialogue and was mainly about her growing up and not being so reliant on boy's approval. Anne Wilson's singing wasn't 100% technically perfect but it was pretty close and I didn't mind her voice, I'm very picky on female voices because I followed a lot in that 10 year band watching stint, and there was none of that annoying warbling that female R&B soul singers from the U.S. use, that I hate. I like her version of Toxic because the music complicated the lyrics better than that mismatched Britney Spears mess. There was also the Carpenter-Close to you, Sting-Every Breath You Take, Mark Seymour-Throw Your Arms Around Me, ABBA-The Winner Takes It All, etc, songs. The humour was simple and mild, like every cabaret show, with the funniest part being the bit about her saying " We are so compatible, you with the penis and me with the vagina". I shouldn't be judging this because cabaret isn't my thing and not really appealing for me, but I didn't see any faults with it. 3
09.09.10 : Project 52's 24hr Gig : Verge Tent - other
Not so much a comedy show but more like fun things to do for 24 hours. One stunt was to send a stand up comic to the UNSW comedy show and sabotage it with jokes that make fun of the UNSW. I think the crap will hit the fan when the UNSW is going to connect to the 24hr gig via Skype. They are playing Boggle online using the whole audience to help get a high score. They are forming and impromptu band to play a song that is being written on the spot. There will be 1000 paper cranes folded and who knows what else. Not an actual show so the score is not applicable.
20 hours later : I just popped in on my way through to see how things were going and discovered some quite haggard people after their all-nighter, some even had lost their youthful appearance and looked older. You could even see that their cognitive response was impaired from fatigue with slight lapses in the proceedings while they reasoned out the next activity. I only got a glimpse of proceeding but the 600 Rubik cube mural of the damaged Mona Lisa had been rebuilt into Sonic the Hedgehog, a 10 hour job we were told. I couldn't see if the paper cranes were finished but there was lots of A4 paper on the ground so it probably got done. 2 strangers were sent on a date last night and they rang in to say things were well. There was a touching tribute to Tom with slide show and moving music, unfortunately I couldn't see which Tom but I hope it was Tom Walker because some people have been giving him hell all year. The event was quite popular with the tent full every time I was there, and I think if ambiance had given way to comfort, by providing more room, even more people would have been present.
08.09.10 : Old School vs New School - Theatresports @ Manning!!! : Manning Bar - impro
Steen Raskopoulas started with the usual audience participation by dividing the audience in to sections and giving them each a part to sing, and then prompting each section, by pointing to them, they would come together to make a song, and this time it was the very popular Salt N Pepa - Push It. The impro consisted of university players current and ex, hence the old school vs new school title. There was 4 teams, 2 very new teams, 1 experienced team, and a team of veterans. The format was the usual short form Theatresports with the teams mixing players in the middle rounds. Memorable scenes from the first half consisted of, Ben Jenkin's gun wielding confrontational chef that tried to bluff a customer, a man roaming the desert with a spiritual plant guide, sugary kittens that somehow turned to cunnilingus, a Film Noir flashing detective in a trench coat, a shy Shakespearian lady meeting her to be husband, Carlo Ritchie doing an great abducting serial killer/janitor in a time warp scene with wheel of cheese, and the very funny emotional replay with Jamaican coconut packers having rage, mild hunger, and finally lust.
The second half continued at the same level as the first. There was a crime endowments scene with the oblivious perpetrator being questioned about a crime that he committed but didn't remember, of destroying the Death Star, with Spock, in the Tardis. But unfortunately because the suspect, Michael Hing, not being a Sci-Fi buff it had him hilariously grappling for answers. A difficult gibberish opera, that's hard to make work, was made very enjoyable by the veterans. A triggers scene with Carlo spontaneously breaking out in Irish dance every time he was confused. A student election musical. The head in a bucket with one person always having to have his head in a bucket of water during the scene, with other players tagging him and swapping places before he asphyxiated, doing a sea captain adventure. An excellent Shakespearian Little Red Riding Hood by the veterans. And finally a Beasty Boys type song scene about plumbers with Cale Bain doing the beat-box sounds, which had great hilarity when a jug of water was poured down the pants of the unfortunate Tom Walker. I don't know what the deal is with poor Tom but he has been picked on all year and it's starting to get me down. On the whole the younger players did more the slap stick, di*k joke, type humour and the veterans did what felt like the more educated intellectual performance, which I liked better, and I thought deserved the win. For me it was a 4, but the crowd liked it more and that's what counts. 4.5
07.09.10 : SUDS Writers' Group at Verge! : Syd Uni - play
I'm not a play kind of person but the 3 plays were going to be short, short attention span problems, so I thought it would be fine. And in the end it turned out to be something different and quite nice. The first play was simple but effective, it was the story of a wealthy self made man that had built his company up form the roots single handed. His nephew came in for a meeting to apply for a job, and even though they were related you could tell they didn't really know each other by the sparse conversation. To fill the conversation the nephew went on to tell things about his life, like his travelling around the world, and his approaching wedding. The uncle ultimately felt remorseful at missing out on all these normal things when he devoted his whole life to his business. The 2nd was about a family who's mother had disappeared and the father not telling the truth. It was a good idea, but I don't think it was portrayed that well, and the end was a bit weird. Something similar happened to me, so I could relate, my boss didn't turn up one day and no one really expected the worse but he passed away in his sleep and I remember the tension near the end when we started thinking the worst. The 3rd was about soldiers fighting in the middle east with one taking everything very seriously, because of battle fatigue, and the other being so nonchalant that he is checking his Facebook page. It felt a bit random and out of control, probably because it's hard to build up the story in only 10 minutes, but it did add to the feeling of confusion on the battle front. There was a big conclusion at the end with the actors switching to high drama mode that really added to the impact at the end. The acting in this one certainly grabbed you attention and I thought was quite good. I thought the show was nice overall, but because I don't know much about plays my comments should be taken with a grain of salt. 3.5
07.09.10 : Tomorrow When the War Began - movie
Action, Adventure, Drama : A group of young people decide to take one last trip into the bush before they turn 18, but on there return everyone has gone missing. The preview didn't look appealing for me but a review that I read said there was a big twist, so being somewhat intrigued I went. Well the twist came in after 30 minutes so the rest was kind of predictable. At least it wasn't like a typical Australian movie with that crappy acting, like nobody really cares, and that cheesy Australian dialogue. In fact with it's explosions and more serious acting it was closer to a Hollywood movie. The only problem was the script in places and a slowish pace, and an expert on reality wouldn't have gone astray. 3
05.09.10 : Club Central Comedy : Club Central Hurstville
Stef Torok was the host tonight. The first time I saw his was about 10 years ago at Bobby C's comedy night at the Eastwood hotel. He was super offensive and slagged everyone off, which everyone found inappropriate but very funny. On the night he did an offensive joke about the blind, but unfortunately for him there was an actual blind person in the audience who made himself known, and instead of being apologetic and without batting an eyelid he started giving the guy the finger right in front of his face. It may sound offensive now but everybody laughed at the unexpected shear audacity for something that we knew was wrong. He did a lot of gigs at the time and I soon soured to his routine, and actually avoided him, but since I haven't seen him for so long I said I would tolerate it and went. He has toned down his material and is not offensive now, and you have to hand it to him because even though there was a small crowd that didn't make much noise during his set he acted like a total professional and hammered out his set with enthusiasm, even though he could have taken the easy way out, which made his bit ok. Brendon Knott was next and is new to me because I haven't seen him before. He was rather good and had a lot of material for someone that looks so young and did a large set. I though it was a big mistake having Dave Smiedt back after only 2 weeks, but he knows what he is doing and his repeat performance was also good. I shouldn't have been worried because I remember one time after Dave had finished his whole routine that the main comic didn't turn up, I think it was that annoying Greg Fleet, so Dave had to go back on and do a whole main fill with not much material left in his repertoire, but he worked it like a pro and made his double stint thoroughly enjoyable. This repeat has to be a walk in the park compared to than that double stint that night, and I'm sure the regulars found it just as enjoyable as last time because they still laughed throughout. 3.5
03.09.10 : Going the Distance - movie
Comedy, Romance : Two non committal singles meet for a one night stand that turns serious. Unfortunately one has to move to the other side of the country so they try to keep their relationship alive via long distance. I don't know if it was me or what but it didn't really grab me, it wasn't bad but it was only ok, and I especially picked a Rom Com because I was feeling a bit down wanted a pick me up. I didn't really laugh much but the younger members in the audience had a few chuckles. 3
02.09.10 : Story Club and When We Were Young : Verge Festival Tent
A horrible wet and cold winters night is transformed in to those special warm and fuzzy nights hanging with friends in the lounge room in the latest instalment of Story Club. With all our whims catered for with free lollies and snacks we set off on a journey with tales from When We Were Young. Miss Alex Lee looked the part as host in her pretty red dress, hopefully next time we can get our regular host Ben Jenkins resplendent in red dress, and was dutifully accompanied by Kirk Douglas, aka Mike Mackertich, adding puns and playing his famous song Whale of a Tale from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea live for our enjoyment. Alex started with a sweet tale of when she was young and the memories of herself that are like ghosts that come alive, like imaginary friends that talk to her. This one was also written in that Alex style that makes her stories sweet but compelling.
Steen Raskopoulos first Story Club story was a good one and was about him and the adventures with his brother. It was about them receiving Batman and Robin costumes for Christmas and turning the garden shed into a Batcave that morphed all manner of superheroes and villains from different franchises into adventures of their own design. Until one day when they ended up doing what kids do, getting lost in the moment, and climbing a tree and ending up precariously perched on the scarily high roof of the shed, with what seemed like no way down. Things quickly escalated when they were spotted by their parents who were less than pleased, and some might have said over reacted for something that they really didn't know any better of. There was much screaming as their Batman universe crumbled around them after they needed help to extricate themselves for their predicament, and as reward for keeping a watchful eye over Gotham City they received a severe scolding. The story was delightfully written and told, and after watching Raskopoulos's for last 7 years it gave me an insight about them. A very good story that got a strong audience response.
Andrew Garrick started off with a tragic accident that had the room stunned, and probably left with some people needing therapy, until halfway where it turned to fiction, thank heavens for that. The nature of the story and delivery had us feeling uneasy and even when we realised it was fiction it was only near the end before our brains could accept it. Enjoyable but very unnerving if you aren't on the ground floor with this one, I just hope this isn't based on an actual accident.
Molly Lewis used her city lifestyle as her only reference to life when she played with her toys. Her imaginary play would be quite unusual compared to us with things like her teddy bear being more at home in a Starbucks rather than in a forest. She was so engrossed in her fantasy lifestyle that she was the unfortunate last child to discover Santa Claus wasn't real, which made us feel for her. But this would ultimately be over shadowed by her quite obsessive love for Lord of the Rings. So obsessed was she that the age of 12 she wrote a long winded letter to Howard Shore, the composer for the LOTR movies, of which she read short excerpts, due to it's exceeding long length, that produced many laughs. And to push it even further after numerous listenings of her LOTR record she actually learnt to play some songs on the recorder. And to go beyond belief itself Miss Alex persuaded Kirk to lend her his recorder so she could play the song "Concerning Hobbits" to great applause and merriment. It may have been highly embarrassing for her but was extremely funny for us, to the point that some girls started crying from laughing.
Simon Greiner childhood imagination ran wild in his spooky tale of the widowed cat lady next door. Her row of 13 flowerpots with dandelions hid the secret of the corpses of 13 dead kittens, and if they were uncovered one year latter would prove the widow was a witch when their bones started dancing in the moonlight. It was a nice story with plenty of spooky undertones.
Special guest Benita Collings told her life story starting with how her parents meet in 1936 with an Australian man pursuing his career in London meeting an English girl, which he took back to Australia to marry, and that's when Benita and her sister was born. After the war her father became restless and they eventually divorced. She went on to tell of her first love and eventually finding another boy to marry, but more out of protocol than anything else, when her home became unliveable with the addition a new step father. It was very compelling and everyone was hanging on every word but it stopped half way through with the caveat that it is to be continued at a later date, which was a bit disappointing as I'm sure everyone was dying to find out what happen next. Even though it wasn't that long ago it painted a picture of what it was like back when things were less stable and there was a lot of compromises, unlike these days where every whim is catered for. Even though it left us hanging it got a huge cheer at the end.
Ben Jenkins story was clever because of the way it unfolded. It was a conservation with himself at age 4, and as the conversation went on you got glimpses of what was happening. We found out that he was waiting backstage to come on and do his big number in a local talent contest grand final. The 2 Ben's consisted of Confident Ben and Worrying Ben with the latter trying to put off Confident Ben. Worrying Ben was relentless but Confident Ben was just too strong and won the day. When the story was over we thought yeah that was a good one but that is when he produced the pièce de résistance that was the actual video of the performance. When the audience saw little Ben with bowl haircut and ukulele busting moves like a pro with well versed choreography the place erupted. I think Ben only wanted it to run for a short time but Alex made sure it ran all the way to it's conclusion, which had the audience laughing and sighing due to it's cuteness. It even showed his arch enemy the pink ballerina that proved to be a thorn in his side.
Zoe Norton Lodge ripped it up again in one of her best stories when she portrayed herself at the age of 2½ as a fast talking street smart toddler ripping on everyone and everything with that acidic tongue of hers. At 2½ she knew what she wanted and she was going to make it in this big and hairy world but not with subtly but by kicking it in the face. She grabbed this world by the throat and enrolled herself in preschool and got to the business of rocking this place down with her star shaped potatoes. Things were moving fast. She got her first job at 3 answering phones while her mother was in a board meeting. There was an urgent call and she strutted to the boardroom and knocked, because she could reach the handle, and proclaimed in a very articulate manner for a 3 year old, that the shit is going to hit the fan if this call isn't answered. This chance meeting impressed the advertising board members and quickly landed her in the dizzying jet-setting world of advertising by becoming the spokesperson for Tourism Australia's Visit Down Under Campaign for Japan. She had finally made it, she was a somebody, and had lived whole a lifetime all before the age of 4. The concept of a 2½ year old acting like an adult and having such drive to succeeded and being so coherent was a winner because it stole the show and was supernova funny. On an unfortunate note the video of her in that campaign was in Super8 film form and couldn't be shown, which was a shame, but we did get a cute photo. The trick next time is to video the projected image, that's how I cheated on mine. I think close to the wall so there is enough light to keep the video in focus is best. So we bid adieu with Kirks insidious song repeating in our heads for the next couple of days at least. 4.5
01.09.10 : The Shawshank Detention - Education & Social Work Revue : Seymour Centre
This one had a lot of in-jokes, in fact nearly all the jokes were Education & Social Work based. There wasn't really much general humour that would appeal to the general public, so if your not in that area this one probably won't appeal to you. There was heaps of teacher jokes, with detention gags, public school gags, juvenile detention gags, etc, with heaps of exaggeration, that may be based on truth, and heaps of stereotype gags. Like the teachers staff room where they are all drunk and living it up, art teachers that were portrayed as hippie paint sniffers, there was a parents teachers night with the teacher thinking derogatory thoughts about their students and their parents during the meeting, there was a lecture for teachers telling them what things they can't do because they could be deemed kiddie fiddling, called "Don't do that because that's what paedophiles do". The funny ones was the lecture skit, because it was very inappropriate, the comparing penises to other things, like "My penis is like an iPhone, because if you hold it at the wrong angle it stop working". The parents teacher meeting was good, the send up of a new social network called MyFace, by using d__k puns like "There are students on MyFace" was nice, and a video where a student ran around campus acting like a stereotypical teacher with their clichés telling students what to do. She even went up to some teachers and treated them like naughty students that had even them laughing when they realised the send up of themselves. There was a cast of just over 20 and they also did the parody songs send-up that is quite common in these revues. All the songs were nice with the most surprising thing being that all the girls can sing quite well. It's not for everyone but was still ok. 3
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