| The Comedython 5000 |
| Written by Luke Oram |
| Monday, 25 May 2009 15:26 |
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I’m a procrastinator. I don’t pay my mobile phone bill right up until the disconnection call from Telecom's billing department. I like to think it makes me sort of a V.I.P. customer. At least I’m guaranteed personalised service... and they’re always so polite. "Hi there Luke! Sorry to disturb you, but we couldn’t help but notice that you haven’t paid us any cash monies for three months... Wondering if you’d like to do something about that situation?" Anyway. Procrastinating... I was assigned to cover the Comedy Festival and things got a bit carried away on me. Suddenly I found myself with four shows to cover and only a few more festival days to do it in. In one deft, fell swoop... I managed to tee up three shows, back-to-back in one night. I called it the Comedython 5000. Hilarious, isn’t it? The night began with a wretched last-minute run to the CBD, to catch Heidi and Rose’s 'A GUIDE TO THE UNCOOL', at The Basement. The Basement is a cool venue with a bar out front, that has graffiti’d walls and bright pink lightbulbs. It’s the kind of place where you’d expect to bump into a Lost-Boys-era Kiefer Sutherland, who would use that deliciously wrinkled smirk of his to coerce you into stealing a 40 of gin, getting on the back of his motorbike and hiding out under the Avondale Railway bridge, before revealing to you that he was a TEENAGE VAMPIRE! But I digress. By the time I got in (creeping into comedy shows late is SO not fashionable), Heidi and Rose were in full swing. Then somebody handed me a plastic bag which, in the darkness felt like either marijuana buds or scroggin. I briefly contemplated a taste test, but decided against it. Meanwhile, Heidi and Rose were on fire. There’s a reason why these two wunderkinds have been the talk of the town during the festival... Delivering a hilariously matter-of-fact seminar on the labyrinth that is ‘cool’, the girls had the crowd in hysterics. The kind of piss-your-pantsery that you remember from your circle-of-friends high school days. Enlisting the help of their borderline musician friend on side of stage, plus voice-overs and hilariously low-fi visuals, 'A GUIDE TO THE UNCOOL' was literally a comedy feast. Entirely unpretentious, delivered with hot shazam by two chicks with moxy. These girls are funny. FUN-NY. Not many people can hold your attention for a full hour, let alone be funny for an hour... But Heidi and Rose packed in a mardi-gras, complete with their brilliant theatre-piece about awkward woman mechanics, a genius parody shanty on ukulele... and a FULLY CHOREOGRAPHED 80’S HIT DANCE. Literally, everything you could ask for. One down. Two to go. Toby Hadoke is an English comedian who’s quite popular and does a lot of stuff with the BBC. Can you tell I’ve done my research? A quick jog across Aotea Square, found me at the Herald Theatre to check out Toby’s 'MOTHS ATE MY DOCTOR WHO SCARF' . The show is Toby’s recollections of a 16-year love affair with Doctor Who. But don’t go thinking that MAMDWS is a nerd’s tirade. Sure, there were toys, that hat, quotes aplenty. But Toby is a consummate gentleman, affable and brilliantly entertaining. Think of your favourite uncle, the one you could listen to for hours, telling you how it used to be. Toby prowled the stage with a masterful dialogue delivered with cheer and nostalgia, spinning a yarn about his first encounters with the Dalek-destroying deviant in his childhood state home, through to the irony of the Doctor’s comeback and a beautiful tale of his son’s discovery of the show. It was like warm-fuzzies wit – poetic and genius. The guy was clearly underrated, looking at the smattering of a crowd too, but absolute magic all the same. The final port of call was 'ROCKET'. Ben Kettell & co.’s interactive tribute to the boxing world, in twelve steps. I bumped into Calum Beck in the doorway of Comedy Underground, who recognised me from our interview a few weeks earlier. He’d had a few, to assuage the nerves. Frankly, it made him charming. ROCKET‘s strength lay in its interactive sphere. Audience participation is the best way to guarantee a great comedy gig. A sort of comedic insurance policy. If I’m going down, you buggers are all coming down with me too. The gamble paid off this time, as the boys hauled up a ‘professional earth-mover’ (Beck: “you move the earth? The whole thing?"), onstage to play the main character. Chaos ensued as Kettell, Beck and their bikini-clad cohort Andrew, combined set pieces, brilliant tipsy ad-libs courtesy of Calum, and a great impersonation of a Slavic housewife. Yes. Slavic. The show was a workout in itself, as Calum and Ben flung themselves haphazardly into boxes of costumes in order to portray everyone from a British Rastafarian to a jaded boxing coach a la Rocky. It felt a bit like Playschool on speed. Thus ended the Comedython 5000. My lengthy excursion to LOLlywood. I cracked open a Laugh-dozen. You like that? It’s mine, you can’t have it. |
