Librarian Idol (FringeTIX)
Andrew Finegan @ Fringe Factory (The Fridge)
7:30pm, Fri 22 Feb 2008
Andrew Finegan is a real, live librarian from Darwin. And a real, live Australian Idol reject. And so, a flimsy backbone for a show was born: time for Finegan to become the pop-icon for librarians everywhere!
Honestly, so much could have gone wrong with this performance. The Idol aspect provided some interesting elements (including a re-telling of Finegan’s Australian Idol audition) but, as a backbone for the show, was a little shaky. At least it provided opportunity for Finegan to trot out some of his songs…
…which were somewhat marred by technical difficulties – his piano overpowered his vocals for one song, and when he tried to compensate by singing louder, you could almost hear his vocal chords shredding themselves in pain. But his lyrics were clever, his piano acceptable, and the performance earnest.
Of course, he was also the beneficiary of a perfect audience – a fair proportion of the room were librarians, and his Dewey Decimal System jokes had a dawning-realisation laughter response from them – which rippled through to the rest of the non-booky audience.
Yes, he did drag me up onto the stage (after addressing me as “ma’am” – first time this Fringe!) to provide Family Feud-esque sound effects (“ding!” and “bow booowwwwwww” – geez I hate that noise). All good fun, though, like the rest of the show, and I reckoned I nailed the comedic timing. Whilst Librarian Idol is probably not going to hit many people’s Fringe highlight reel, it was a solid show with enough humour and personality to make it worthwhile.
I bumped into Andrew a few hours later at the Crown and Sceptre – he apologised for the gender mistake and we had a lovely chat about his show, Darwin, and the Fringe in general. Nice chap :)