Billy Connolly
Festival Theatre
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
Despite disconcerting colour pix in TV Week recently revealing that Billy Connolly had sheared off his hair and beard for a filum, his familiar trademarks were mostly back for his return Australian tour. All the same, he was still a bit dubious about the reduction in fungus- I look like a fucking social worker, he roared and then off he went for two and a half hours of rumination, digression and comic …
Continue Reading Back to top1990
Murray Bramwell
There is something likeably democratic about the Fringe’s published programme. In alphabetic order under general headings, it is the great leveller- events are listed with sublime even-handedness. The good, the bad and the ugly are all equal in the sight of the Fringe creators.
The only trouble is that this doesn’t make it easy for the poor punter looking for a winner or even something each way.Add to that the absence of a comprehensive box office at …
Continue Reading Back to top1990
Found Objects
Lion Theatre
Until March 11.
4 Stars. “Definitely take the plunge- endearingly funny.”
Found Objects are the unrivalled exponents of wet comedy and in their latest show, Plunge, these three stooges remind us what it’s like to be nerds at the beach. What’s more, they sing- “My Grandmother is a Fuddy Duddy” and their dolphin tribute “We Are the Hippies of the Sea” accompanied on guitar , trombone and pan pipes.
They are also big on props- …
Continue Reading Back to topA Complete Dagg
John Clarke
Susan Haynes/ Allen and Unwin
RRP $14.95
A series of interviews has begun appearing on Nine’s A Current Affair in the last five minutes of their Friday edition. Paul Keating, Andrew Peacock, Margaret Thatcher and Dan Quayle all appear on TV frequently but never before has anyone noticed their uncanny resemblance to John Clarke. They look and talk like him, they even share his profound belief in the reductio ad absurdum, but, at the same …
Continue Reading Back to top1989
At last the full truth can be told. In a two part programme starting tonight (Saturday, August 26) at 6.30 on ABC Radio National (5CL 729) Prince Belligerent, arguably the least known medieval nonentity since Monty Python’s Sir Notappearinginthisfilm, will be given his historical due.
For reasons which still remain clouded in mystery, the task of presenting Belligerent’s extraordinary story has been entrusted to ABC National’s Comedy Unit in Melbourne. Working from a script by Kevin Nemeth (this is …
Continue Reading Back to top1989
Mistero Bufo
Lenny Kovner
Lion Theatre
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
Mistero Bufo, as Lenny Kovner drily informs us, does not translate as Mister Boofhead. The Mysteries are medieval stories taken from the Bible and Apochrypha, as well as from the lives of the saintly , the bold and the not-so-beautiful. Presented in what began as eisteddfods of community theatre, presided over by a watchful clergy, they grew to become travelling popular entertainment on a scale to rival the Church …
Continue Reading Back to topJames Bond
Cliffhanger
The Space, Adelaide Festival Centre.
Britain’s Cliffhanger Theatre Company’s ]ames Bond may not be everybody’s idea of a universal export but will tickle those who like their comedy somewhere between the Goodies and the Spanish Inquisition. Although, unlike the more pugnacious forms of manic English humour, James Bond is low-key, whimsical and gets curiouser and curiouser.
The four Cliffhangers give Ian Fleming’s imperturbable Bond a right old filleting. Pete McCarthy has the familiar tux and grooming but …
Continue Reading Back to topWogs Out of Work
Space Cabaret Club, Adelaide Festival Centre
Wogs Out of Work is the brainchild of Nick Giannopoulos, Simon Palomares and Maria Portesi. It began in Melbourne two years ago and has now played in ·most of the state capitals and regional centres. Gordon, the road sweeper ambles amiably through the crowd to begin a wog’s-eye-view monologue. The ethnic origin is undifferentiated Mediterranean and the comedy is as broad as the Parthenon. Gordon recalls his encounter at the …
Continue Reading Back to top1989
Wogs Out of Work
Her Majesty’s Theatre,
January, 1989.
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
Wogs Out of Work has been putting itself about for nearly four years now. Two separate companies with numerous cast reincarnations have presented more than 1,250 performances to an estimated 650,000 paying customers. Many of those people had never been to theatre in their lives and the bemused actors, most of them playing to their ethnic communities for the first time, expressed pride in the warmth …
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