[2015037] Matt Price: A British Bloke’s Guide to Being a Man
Matt Price @ Austral Hotel – Red Room
8:30pm, Tue 17 Feb 2015
In my experience, seeing back-to-back standup shows can often be fraught with danger: a bad show early on can sour the mood for subsequent performers, whereas a great show can expose the flaws of those later in the run.
So it was this evening.
I’d just seen Celia Pacquola perform a stellar set, then rushed in to Matt Price amiably chatting to the small crowd that had turned up for his show. And Price can tell a story, and most certainly has plenty of interesting stories to tell: drawing from his own life experiences, we hear about people and anecdotes that befell him during his blue-collar working life (who knew fisheries could generate such humour?) and, later, tales of prison (for the insane) gigs gone wrong.
The stories themselves are interesting and well-told: Price is an affable chap. But at times his connection to the audience seemed strained, and the segues between his tales are clumsy (at best) and – in contrast to my previous show – felt absolutely amateurish.
And I’m sure Price is not an amateur, but it’d be a lie to say that A British Bloke’s Guide to Being a Man (a deceptive title) wasn’t a massive let-down after the high of Pacquola.
(37) Matt Price: A British Bloke's Guide to Being a Man: Gentle stories from an affable & natural storyteller. #ff2015 #ADLfringe
— Pete Muller (@festivalfreakAU) February 17, 2015