[2008067] DeAnne Smith: Shouting Over Drunks

DeAnne Smith: Shouting Over Drunks (FringeTIX)

DeAnne Smith @ The Tuxedo Cat

11:00pm, Thu 6 Mar 2008

Shouting Over Drunks made my shortlist, but was languishing on the Maybe pile until DeAnne Smith flyered me whilst walking through the Uni one day. She seemed charming, personable – that’s all it takes to swing me… I’m such a whore.

So – after climbing the seventy-eight flights of stairs that were on the path to The Tuxedo Cat, I emerge onto the Rooftop Bar. It’s a bar. On a rooftop. And it’s ace. I’ve no idea whether it’s open during non-Fringe times, but… it’s lovely. Great vibe, cheap drinks (well, compared to The Garden, anyway). The Tuxedo Cat, on the other hand, is a small room with a small stage and thirty chairs. But hey, it’s a venue.

DeAnne Smith is great. She’s got an audience that’s only just barely into double figures, but her poise and confidence onstage is second-to-none. Her raison d’être appears to be the ability to tell a compelling – though essentially humorless – story, and then turn the tale on its head with a cheap joke or pun… groanworthy, yes, but when you slip into Smith’s groove (oo-er) it has a satisfying rhythm to it. The long diatribe on vaginal reconstructive surgery, for instance, led to the lowliest of cheap gags – but that journey to the joke, in itself, is still a perversely enjoyable experience.

Other notable threads from Smith included her uncanny ability to drive girlfriends to mime, and her apparent influence over her parent’s alcoholism as a child. All bloody funny stuff, and that – coupled with Smith’s confidence and style and stunningly hot girlfriend – had me leaving The Tuxedo Cat with a smile on my face and a resolve to see DeAnne Smith again.