wheelspinner
Are We There Yet? Member
Nobody's perfect, I'm a nobody, so ...
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Post by wheelspinner on Mar 27, 2010 6:38:33 GMT -5
Oh man, is it busy in Melbourne this weekend!
This is the first week of the football season, where the traditional rivals round gets played. The F1 Grand Prix is in town. It's the start of the Greek Easter celebrations, so there is a big Antipodean Festival on. The Flower Show is on and the L'Oreal Fashion Week is just winding down.
Must be time to go to the Melbourne Comedy Festival.
We normally try to catch a mix of Australian and overseas acts, preferably people we haven't seen before. The Festival draws big names - Janeane Garofolo and Greg Behrendt are on the program this year - but they play to packed houses in large theatres; it's just not the same as going to see a stand-up comedian in some tiny little venue. That's the origin of the Festival, and it really is the best way to see it; go see someone you never heard of in a makeshift performing space somewhere.
Tonight we went to see peripatetic UK comedian Russell Kane. His show is called Human Dressage, and it's about the way people carry themselves at different ages and in different places. He's pretty good at doing regional accents, and is highly energetic. Kane has borderline Asbergers' so maybe that's not a surprise.
For what sounds like a bit of an intellectual exercise, there was a generous helping of exceedingly bawdy humour. It was a quite broad and very funny show.
Here's a sample of Kane, from his performance here last year.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 27, 2010 12:56:29 GMT -5
I wanna go.
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Post by Georgina on Mar 27, 2010 18:53:33 GMT -5
I'll second that, btwgf.
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wheelspinner
Are We There Yet? Member
Nobody's perfect, I'm a nobody, so ...
Posts: 4,103
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Post by wheelspinner on Apr 10, 2010 8:47:51 GMT -5
Howling with laughter tonight after seeing two shows. First is a local act called Fear of a Brown Planet. They are two Muslim guys, one Sri Lankan and one Bangladeshi. They do a lot of race-based humour and are pretty vocal about racism in Australian society. They made great play of the recent events here with violence against Indians, and with our immigration debate. Very political, and quite confronting, although it fell a bit flat at times. Here's a bit ar Aamer Rahman (the Bangladeshi) from their last show here a few years ago, which one them the Best Newcomer Award. The second show was absolute gold. We saw Andrew O'Neill, a British comic who is a transvestite, heavy metalling, atheist satanist. His show was hilarious; I was helpless with laughter most of the time. It was also quite intellectual, with quite a lot of philosophising. I loved one bit he did about reading two books at once (something I do all the time). Apparently he was reading The God Delusion at the same time as he was reading Aleister Crowley. He remarked that the big problem with Dawkins is that his book doesn't teach you how to summon demons. Here's O'Neill from this year's Comedy Festival gala. He toned it down a bit for the big event; no makeup or cross-dressing. www.dailymotion.com/video/xcphqj_andrew-o-neill-melbourne-comedy-fes_fun
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wheelspinner
Are We There Yet? Member
Nobody's perfect, I'm a nobody, so ...
Posts: 4,103
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Post by wheelspinner on Apr 17, 2010 18:28:35 GMT -5
Final weekend of the Comedy Festival. We went to see local headliner Frank Woodley.
Woodley is one of our best physical comedians. He presents a nervous, shambolic stage character who comes across as an endearing naif who causes chaos all around him. He loves to do animal jokes and wry little musical numbers. Last night he did a lot of audience interaction, mostly because an incredible number of people who came in late.
Woodley's delivery is full of false starts, digressions and departures in his story-telling. His show reminds me of Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. It takes forever to get to the point of a story, but there is often a lot of humour in the detours he takes. However it can try your patience at times, particularly when the payoff is not really funny enough to warrant the rambling delivery.
Highlights included him doing his Uncle Sid playing golf in a drunken stupor, and the finale where he donned a trilby, turned down the lights and did a deadly Tom Waits impersonation.
This was a good show but flat in parts; I've seen Woodley be a lot funnier in the past.
Here's a clip giving a good idea of Woodley's act:
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Post by MacBeth on Apr 20, 2010 7:33:37 GMT -5
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