Perri Cassie – Squirrel Comedy

5 Good Reasons to See Perri Cassie: Secondhand Bubblegum

Perri had such a stellar run last year with his debut hour Channel Perri that the festival put him in some of their swanky venues they keep for the brightest up and coming acts (it me).

2. After his run last year he ventured off to America to go and play some clubs in America including The Comedy Store. To play any club owned by Mitzi Shore is pretty damn cool right? RIGHT? Ah you don’t care. It’s cool though, trust me. Yeah I’ll switch from third-person to regular perspective, whatever. I’ll do it here in this article, I’ll do it in my fucking show if I want, because that’s the kind of rule bending and boundary pushing that’ll get you booked at The Comedy St- look, whatever, it was a good experience.

3. Perri is the best-dressed person in all of comedy. Come for the laughs, stay for the display of a peak 90’s aesthetic.

4. Secondhand Bubblegum will make you feel better about your own awkward moments in life, because his are much, much worse.

5. A joke that’s in this show helped put him in the top 10 on all of Reddit with over 30k likes and Collegehumour’s list of “11 Great Jokes from Rising Comedians” which is worth literally fuck all except an “oh neat” by his friends. It’s a good joke though – you should come hear it throughout the course of the festival as well as many other great jokes.

Perri Cassie performs Secondhand Bubblegum at Trades Hall

https://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2018/shows/secondhand-bubblegum

5 good reasons to see Perri Cassie: Channel Perri

1. Perri had a completely sold out run at last year’s festival with his split show Simon & Perri Go Large – now he’s in a much bigger venue and panicking that his career peaked. HELP.

2. Channel Perri is a reflection of how he sees the world he’s barely paying attention to. He spends so much time looking at his phone at any given moment. He once tried to watch Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind, a movie that runs at a total of 108 minutes – it took him 3 hours because he was too busy looking at memes and filming his dog listening to rap music. The show is a collection of things that actually made him look away from his phone, so they must totally be very funny and worth hearing about right?

3. He once thought about moving into political comedy but the hype became too much so he just stayed true to the real topics like the cost of berries and raising an ugly dog.

4. His jokes and gags have appeared on cult meme website Brown Cardigan no less than 6 times. Please don’t hold your applause.

5. He was once described by his peers as “possibly the most fashionable comedian in Melbourne” – which has no value really, it carries as much weight as being possibly the most famous person in Tasmania, the competition isn’t fierce and like not even your mum really cares.
He dresses like a young Dennis the Menace with the face of an adult Macaulay Culkin who isn’t living his best life, it’s worth admiring/laughing at for an hour.

Perri Cassie performs Channel Perri at 1000 £ Bend

For tickets and More information go to the Melbourne International Comedy Festival website:

https://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2017/shows/channel-perri

Saduation

By Colin Flaherty

It takes immense talent to make the subject of depression the basis for a stand up show and make it hilarious. Perri Cassie and Harrison Engstrom took to this challenge with style and a fair amount of sleight of hand. References to the depression itself were only mentioned fleetingly in a matter of fact manner which allowed the guys to concentrate on exploring various social norms that gave them the shits with lashings of self-deprecation on top.

When both performers revealed that they were in a much happier place now, it was a concern that this would lead to them downplaying the exaggerated comedic potential in misery and diminish our empathy for them, hence robbing the material of its power. Both guys however, did a great job in presenting their tales with the benefit of hindsight, giving it a sheen of comedic triumph. Both performers also comically ripped into ex partners who had done them wrong, injecting a bit of venom and spite to keep things from being an evening of sad-sack self-pity.

Each show features a guest performer introducing the proceedings with a tight five. On opening night this role was taken up by Jeremy Webb who chose to embrace the theme of the show and present a set that was heavily steeped in self-deprecation. This was despite starting things off by trying to raise the crowd’s enthusiasm and appearing like he would be a sharp contrast to the talk of depression which was expected to follow. It was an interesting tactic and he pulled it off.

Cassie began the show proper by playing a very downtrodden role. It wasn’t entirely “sad sack” territory but was of someone accepting their defeat and making fun of his ordeals. His delivery was so downplayed that it threw off the rhythm at times, resulting in slightly patchy laughs, but the underlying solid material was evident. He had plenty of hilarious ideas and got the biggest audience reactions when he dared to flirt with controversy.

By contrast Engstrom had a very upbeat stage persona that put the emphasis on being the lovable loser who often found himself in wacky scrapes. His set comprised of stories from his life that didn’t always keep the audience in hysterics but were certainly interesting enough to capture their attention and hold it for the duration. A story about an orgy is sure to pique anybody’s interest even when it kind of trails off rather than ending with a bang…as it were.

This duo, each with only a few years under their belts, demonstrated that they have the skills to present an amusing and entertaining double hander. Some fine tuning will happen along the way but even in these early stages, it’s worth checking out.

Saduation is on at the Imperial Hotel until September 21st

https://www.melbournefringe.com.au/program/event/view/da3c0ae9-c535-4cc0-a003-fb899ff40cbf