Reviews – Page 137 – Squirrel Comedy

Alasdair Tremblay-Birchall : Success Arms

By Elyce Phillips

Could the secret to success be in your stance? Can you limit your chances of having an ugly baby? These are among the many questions you didn’t know you had that Alasdair Tremblay-Birchall answers in Success Arms.

Success Arms is a grab-bag of bits. It’s sort of about getting older and sort of about finding success, but mostly about quick, well-written jokes. Tremblay-Birchall stumbles from one to the next with self-depreciating clumsiness. Stilted bouts of audience interaction bridged the gaps, conversations rarely being more extended than, “What’s that you’ve got there? A cornetto? Where’d you get that?” For the most part, Tremblay-Birchall’s delivery style is endearing, though at times it interrupted the flow of the show. It was in longer pieces, such as a cringe-inducingly extended bit about his urethra, where he built up some momentum and really shone.

The material is all quite strong, but ‘Success Arms’ feels more like a particularly good extended set at an open-mic. Tremblay-Birchall keeps things very casual, as though he’s testing out his stuff on a group of mates. It makes for a nice sense of camaraderie sitting in the audience. At the end of the show, with no back exit to the Ladies’ Lounge, Tremblay-Birchall stands by the door and high-fives everyone as they leave, the sound of slaps filtering into the hall behind you as you exit the Forum.

‘Success Arms’ is rough in its presentation, but highly enjoyable. Tremblay-Birchall is a talented writer and a personable performer. The show has some great moments and you’ll definitely leave with a smile on your face.

Success Arms is on at the Forum Theatre – Ladies’ Lounge until April 20
http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/success-arms-alasdair-tremblay-birchall

Steele Saunders : Rosebud

By Lisa Clark

It’s clear that Steele Saunders has put a lot of work into crafting this year’s festival show about coming of age in Rosebud in the early to mid ’90s. With a strong structure and setting on a single night in the last week he lived there before moving away and becoming a different person, it has a touch of American Graffiti about it.

Rosebud is an interesting tale with memories within memories as Steele walks down the streets of his old seaside home town two decades ago on the way to a party. Walking, ‘cause his mate Dave hasn’t turned up to give him a lift. It’s a pity we don’t learn more about Dave (or I somehow missed it amongst the nick-names), because he becomes more significant later on. We do learn more about other colourful characters like Slab, Bedwell and his klepto mate Booga, less about the few women they encounter.

I’ve never understood how people especially blokes can have such dickhead mates, but after seeing Rosebud and Damian Callinan’s show The Lost WW1 Diary of Private Paddy Callinan, the more I realise that teen mates can be like war buddies. People thrown together, doing their bit to get through the dangerous battle that is the teenage years. This includes celebrating their shortcomings and bad boy behaviour (like stealing), the nick-names, the drinking, planning strategies for entertainment and losing their virginity, hiding out from the enemy (adults and other teens), as well as mourning those that don’t make it through. I think I learned that men (in general) don’t seem to have changed much fundamentally in a hundred years. I also learned that since leaving home Steele has changed; he’s grown and can luckily look back at it all and find the humour.

I’ll admit that the main topics for Steele’s 2012 show (The Cat’s Meow) – his cats and his relationship with his girlfriend – were more up my street but this show is much stronger in its structure and writing. Steele has eased his material, some of it ‘classic Steele’, into the story fairly impressively so that you don’t notice and it feels fresh. The first part of the show is particularly funny and is later brave enough to go into dark places, even if it doesn’t want to analyse them too much. Frustratingly, Steele’s flat delivery throughout lets the show down somewhat. The few times he smiles, there is a twinkle in his eye and the material benefits. Having heard him laugh and muck about with friends on his Green Guide Letters podcast, it’s clear that when he is more animated he is better able to sell a punchline, but he does have a tendency in his standup to pull back too much, perhaps in an effort to maintain a dry persona.

Rosebud is aimed at his own demographic, dudes who grew up in the ’90s in the suburbs, though, as men haven’t changed much over the years I’m sure there is nostalgia here for many age groups. There is a lot to enjoy in Steele’s reminiscing and it is definitely an entertaining show to take a bunch of your mates to.

Rosebud is on at the Imperial Hotel until April 20
http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/rosebud-steele-saunders

Genevieve Fricker : The Pineapple

By Noel Kelso

Performing in a room which appears to have only just been rediscovered after many years and had the cobwebs and dusty boxes removed, Genevieve Fricker entertains her audience with an hour of great gags, brilliantly observed musical comedy and tales of her life.

Wielding an electric guitar, Fricker begins her show with a very funny song about writing routines on her phone. This warms her audience up for the tales which follow.

This includes reminiscing over adverts from the previous decade and positing a tragic backstory for the main character. This is well done by Fricker and it mattered not that I had not seen the ad in question as she paints such a vivid picture with her words.

Her curiosity at the world is infectious and the audience finds itself pondering if there really is a phone call gossiping conspiracy betwixt cab drivers and convenience store clerks. There is an honesty to her delivery which is refreshing as she speaks about her depression and the overcompensation this leads her to.

One of the highlights of the show is Fricker relating the tale of finding her car vandalised in quite a strange manner and the confrontation this leads to with one of her neighbours whilst Fricker herself is dressed like a prim Sunday school teacher from the 1950s. Apparently comics are prone to doing crazy things when criticised.

This was really funny, naturalistic comedy which included several astute observations about the foibles of modern life and thoughtful musings on her family and mixed cultural heritage including some well-timed call-backs.

The Pineapple is on at The Duke of Wellington Hotel until April 7
http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/the-pineapple-genevieve-fricker

Tien Tran : If You Don’t Know, Now You Know

By Colin Flaherty

Things have been moving rather quickly for Tien Tran. After competing in RAW in 2011 and being in the MICF Comedy Zone last year, he has taken the next step and put on his debut solo show. Have things been moving too fast for Tran? Possibly.

Tran covered the topics that most twenty-somethings talk about; Weed, laziness and porn amongst them. These were topics that he easily milked laughs from but at times it was almost like shooting fish in a barrel. He also included some interesting views on child-rearing, front lawns and religion that were surprising and hilarious.

In an effort to differentiate himself from all the white middle-class performers out there, he explored some serious topics such as immigration and racism with which he was able give a slightly different perspective by being an Australian born of Vietnamese descent. There were some unique and amusing ideas amongst these topics but he often provided straight opinion and fact instead of jokes, leaving us agreeing with him rather than laughing.

Most of his material was structured in a way where he would run with an idea to its logical conclusion. This worked some of the time, taking them to genuinely unexpected places, but often the punch lines could be predicted ahead of time. He also had the habit of continuing past the actual punchline, ending on a whimper rather than a bang. The result was a hour whose laughs were patchy.

On stage, Tran is personable with a slight hip hop edge (he did name his show after a Biggy Smalls lyric after all). He had the audience hanging on his every word even through the lulls.

This was an enjoyable hour in spite of his rookie mistakes. There are lots of fertile ideas in his set, some that already work but others which have plenty of potential with some retooling. Tran has a unique voice and is definitely a performer to keep an eye on.

If You Don’t Know, Now You Know is on at The Forum – Carpet Room until April 20
http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/if-you-don-t-know-now-you-know-tien-tran

CockBagg Magicians: D’illusional

By Colin Flaherty

Gentleman actors Maurice Cock and Belvedere Bagg (played by Melbourne comedy stalwarts Ged Cogley and Jamie McCarney) return to the stage with their latest endeavour – the are now the world’s greatest magicians! Making an hour of our life disappear, they fumbled their way through all manner of unrealistic illusions while regaling us with their renowned bawdy repartee.

As you would expect from a Cockbagg performance, there was plenty of toilet humour and lots of innuendo, so much so that you could say that the show had homoerotic overtones. Their wonderfully delusional personas got an even bigger workout with the addition of magic stunts. The duo had to cope with dodgy looking tricks (with equally dodgy props) and hilarious trick failures while comically struggling to maintain the façade of being in control. Their woeful attempts to cover their shortcomings were dealt with in clever and amusing ways. They may not have been up to a Tommy Cooper level of comedic magic but their bumbling through the hour was a joy to behold.

Magic shows generally involve some form of audience participation and this was no exception. “Volunteers” were used in illusions involving mind reading and card manipulation but there was a lot less dragging people up onto the stage than you would expect. One did involve some embarrassing personal space violation but generally the performers were the butt of the joke. In this case, the major role of the audience was to massage their egos by applauding at every opportunity.

The performance was quite loose with the odd erroneous sound cue and the pair often pushing each other to the point of corpsing. Their style of slapstick wasn’t the slickest but was functional enough to suit these haphazard characters. Rather than detracting, this added beautifully to the chaos of the show.

Great effort went into the staging of this show; from the carnival-styled posters to the Consentino Magic Kit proudly displayed next to the stage to the many props with which they weaved their magic. Their elaborate and ridiculous costuming proved that these two comedians were not afraid to make themselves look stupid.

If you don’t mind crude humour, D’Illusional will keep you laughing and entertained. There are no deep themes, just pure unadulterated silliness.

CockBagg Magicians: D’illusional is on at The Red Violin until April 19
http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/cockbagg-magicians-d-illusional-ged-jamie

David Quirk : Career, Suicide

By Sofia Monkiewicz

If you want to see a comedy show containing a variety of stories about careers and/or suicide, then David Quirk’s Career, Suicide might be a disappointment for you. With minimal content on both of these topics, this show is a left-of-centre comedic narrative, focusing mainly on skateboards, vegans, and towels. Mostly towels.

David Quirk is an odd character. Confident but slightly awkward. Amusing but with some serious undertones. His humour is in his storytelling, which he does well; he captures the interest of the audience with his epic tales of strange life experiences and funny conversations he has had. His stories are long and entertaining and he builds them carefully, however, unfortunately there is a severe lack of theme and no punchy or memorable endings to many of them.

Entering the stage in only a towel and dripping with water from head to toe, Quirk creates a narrative from the very beginning. We want to know the backstory, and once we know the backstory we want to know how it ends. This particular journey of his is delivered with enthusiasm and wit, but it does not successfully form a strong backbone for the entirety of the show as presumably intended. Most of Quirk’s material is amusing but not laugh-out-loud funny, and that’s alright; the audience remain engaged and smiling throughout. The skateboard anecdotes are witty and original, especially the retelling of a surprising altercation with a crude eight-year-old girl, and a spontaneous semi-striptease nicely breaks up the word-heavy script.

Quirk is a skateboarder, an animal activist and a vegan, as well as being a stand-up comedian, and we become well aware of his passion for animal rights in this show. He has some insightful thoughts about veganism, and tells several jokes about the judgemental questions he is often asked about the assumed consequences of his lifestyle. At one point he does cross the line a little from being sarcastically funny to critical and preachy, and it felt as though we were being berated as a group for potentially (and probably) being meat-eaters. His strong opinions are admirable, but at times it did become more of a speech about his vegan beliefs than an amusing take on our eating habits.

Overall, David Quirk has managed to create an entertaining show. His dry sense of humour and serious nature compliments the content of Career, Suicide, and although the stories themselves do not have any noticeable theme or strong conclusions, the material is clever, well-written and droll.

Career, Suicide is on at Melb Town Hall until April 20
http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/career-suicide-david-quirk