By Lisa Clark
The main impression from this show about social media is that the audience is at a work seminar in a tiny cramped bright room up many flights of stairs in a ‘clean comedy’ venue (so don’t swear too much coming up all those bloody stairs). Luckily it’s a very good seminar by a talented, engaging performer, Jordana Borensztajn, who, yes, does professional seminars about social media.
The premise of Like Me, Love Me, Retweet Me was that Jordana is a bit obsessed with creating a better self-image of herself online, but there was no deep emotional story here, that idea seemed (ironically) pasted over the top of what was more of an excuse to poke fun at how the internet has changed our lives and the crazy pitfalls of social media. Right down to just showing us some time wasting silly cat videos for fun. Well it couldn’t really be a show about the internet without cat videos could it?
All of Jordana’s audio-visual work is top notch from the stunning introductory video to the pictures supporting her act throughout and her vox pop interviews with people about social media on the street where someone rather shockingly, so casually talks about presenting themselves as a brand online. It all goes seamlessly and is also mostly supportive of rather than instead of the comedy. Except maybe her ‘Funny things I found on line’ bit, which fell a bit flat, possibly because we’ve all found much funnier things online than the ones she presents.
Jordana cleverly treats the audience like her online contacts, constantly craving approval, asking for likes, photos and the inevitable selfies. Taking Shakespeare’s idea that All the World’s a Stage and showing how the internet is one big stage upon which we all perform our parts is even more true for a born performer like Jordana. She is bright, perky and passionate about her pursuits. There is a bit of harmless audience participation that as usual is a bit more fun for the participants and their friends than the rest of us. She also gets the audience to help her out in the fabulous finale which is a brilliant idea as she acknowledges that singing is not her strong suit.
As a bit of a nerd who evolved with computers by hanging out with serious geeks who could build computers from scratch and created IT departments at major universities when there were none, I found it all a bit mainstream and not terribly illuminating. A lot of her observations and ideas are not very new, especially in on-line world. This was not written for computer geeks. This is for groups of friends and family members who find the online world fun but perplexing and want to have a relaxing laugh about how ridiculous it has all become and Jordana has written just the show.
Jordana Borensztajn – Like Me, Love Me, Retweet Me is on at Comedy on Collins which is the clean comedy venue, so no swearing or rude stuff.
http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/like-me-love-me-retweet-me-jordana-borensztajn