A Smile , A Song and a Lump of Wood
Anthony Ackroyd and Geoff Kelso.
Club Foote.

Adelaide has been treated to some great cabaret lately and Anthony Ackroyd and Geoff Kelso’s A Smile, A Song and a Lump of Wood is a good indication that Club Foote in particular has been presenting entertainment of a high caliper. After an agreeable meal at Quiet Waters, with which the club has been making regular dinner deals, we walked with Club Footemen, Mark Ascione, Richard Meyman and Richard Moore, the few paces over to Blyth St for the preview of the show. It is a good venue for cabaret – spacious, informal without being ratty, the carpets are soft and drink service to the table is swift and unobtrusive.

Which brings us to Ackroyd, Kelso and their lump of wood. Geoff Kelso is best known for his part in The Gillies Report team in its heyday but both he and Ackroyd have been working in live comedy for long enough to have developed plenty of assurance in front of audiences. Their material is funny and the show is smoothly paced.

Arriving on stage with their lump of four by two, they make George Raft, Natalie Wood and Australia Post jokes, all merciful brief, before moving into their Police education unit skit for schools – Cop this Australia, a potted history of the rozzers since they started cracking heads 150 years ago. In a solo spot Ackroyd played a wickedly funny set as Johnny Rotten at the Arkaba Cabaret and Bingo in the year 2005 singing “No Future” (a song that has been very kind to him over the years) while Kelso made noises off announcing chook raffle winners.

Then Kelso played Judas lscariot as a theatrical agent organising a gig for his boy, Jesus Christ, for the Easter weekend – offering him the chance to see his name up in candles and promising to make him the biggest thing to hit Jerusalem since unleavened bread.

The pair complement well – Kelso has a harsh wit which is balanced by Ackroyd’s gentler, almost boyish comic style. The material is well balanced over two forty minute sets and Michael Roberts on keyboards has programmed good arrangements for the songs, many of them parodies, in the show.

The final skit is a particular winner – Hamster, Pet of Denmark – a rather nondescript looking ferret on a stick plots his revenge on the court of Elsinore among finger puppets, talking cushions and an array of increasingly unlikely paraphernalia as the tragedy squeaks to its restful silence.

It is a good show and deserves a good season. Club Foote is striding ahead as a first rate cabaret venue and it deserves support or Adelaide will lose another of its brighter ideas. Give it a whirl, it’s better than a poke in the funnybone with a lump of wood.

“Foote and Mouth”, The Adelaide Review, No.34, January, 1987, p.20.