[2012086] A Handful of Walnuts
Justine Sless @ Burnside Library
10:30am, Mon 5 Mar 2012
I must admit to feeling a little… dubious about comedy shows that have a matinée, especially when that show is before noon; they always feel like a bit of a risk. Still, Justine Sless’ précis was enough to get her show Shortlisted, and the timing certainly is convenient… so why would I look a gift horse in the mouth?
But the day hasn’t started well – 10:30am really was too early for me to be dragging my old bones out to Burnside, especially when my intended breakfast parlour was neither as conveniently on-the-way as I’d thought, nor open. So I rock up to the Burnside Library tired, hungry, and slightly grumpy; I search for the location of the show and discover that it’s apparently in the toddler play area at the back of the library; there’s a concerted amount of rearrangement going on to facilitate the seating for the show as I arrive, and there seems to be scant regard for ticketing.
Of course, I had completely glossed over the précis’ warning “parents and babies welcome to the AM ‘crybaby’ shows”, so I was ill-prepared mentally for the oddly-mixed crowd that consisted of the elderly, and mums with mewling toddlers. And, as Sless presented herself to this motley audience, I realised that I was totally not in a receptive mood for comedy… luckily, she had a (gorgeous) guitar accompaniment (with enticing, gritty vocals) begin proceedings, providing an opportunity for me to shut my eyes and try to scare off the grumpy gremlins.
When Sless begins her set, two things become very clear very quickly: her field of comedy is driven by observing the minutiae of suburban housewifery, and her delivery is dry. I initially thought that she was just struggling with an unreceptive audience – her soft voice caused some of the silvertops to amp up their hearing aids – but it turns out that Sless has an almost distant style: there’s no real physical projection, not a whole lot of pitch variation, and her permanent half-smile gives you no clues as to where she thinks the punchlines are.
Her material is drawn from suburban mundanity (of which I have little experience), and there’s a lot of jokes about child-rearing. Birthing stories, the unexpected mental pressure with being alone with her newborn for the first time, playgroup conflicts (the “sanctimonious bitch” episode was really entertaining, as was the tale of pissing in the ukelele), with kindy- and school-related stories following somewhat chronologically. There’s some uneven material regarding her husband, too (although the joke about meeting her husband falls flat), and other jokes rooted in domesticity seem either underdone (the writing on the baking paper bit springs to mind) or just bizarre (the sponge puppetry closer). As for the “homebaked haikus” – I’m pretty sure they didn’t follow standard haiku rules. After all, it’s hard to have only 17 syllables when you’ve got more than 17 words.
…But maybe that was the joke.
And that highlights (part of) the problem I had with A Handful of Walnuts: as I’ve (proudly) stated many times before, I’m thankfully bereft of children, so I have no practical relationship to much of what Justine Sless was talking about here… but that should be fine. It’s occasionally nice to vicariously deal with the amusing grief associated with the raising of children, and the odd touchstone (like the recognition that houses become just a collection of surfaces) should be enough to connect me to the performance. But those points of connection, of commonality, between Sless and myself were few and fleeting, and I’ll freely admit to coming into the show in an off-kilter mood which almost undoubtedly affected my perception of it; certainly enough so that I was slightly embarrassed and unprepared to give a reasonable response when Sless spotted me après-Back of the Bus and asked me what I’d thought of her show.