The Sam Simmons Experience [FringeTIX]
Sam Simmons @ Le Cascadeur
8:45pm, Sun 1 Mar 2009
I had no idea that Sam Simmons was a local boy. I guess the coasters that are floating around with “I lost my virginity on a slide in Hallett Cove” should’ve given it away, but I’d not seen them before the show… which’d make it a bit hard for them to have passed on their pertinent information.
Sigh. Another day, another tangent.
I suspect great things when we enter to the strains of “Monkey Magic”, and am pleased when I manage to snaffle a prime spot in one of the dozen-or-so seats in Le Cascadeur with a back on it. I’m even more pleased to see a flip-chart onstage – because that pre-empted the utterly bizarre diagrams that Simmons scooted through. He’s also got a sound effects box that he used for aural puntuaction (and laughable contrast: jolly jingle + “your Dad has cancer” = guilty giggles). But the bulk of the show stems from his opera libretto based on his time as a Coles employee at the Marion Shopping Centre.
…errrmmmmm, yes.
There’s a few decent songs that come from this, a wonderful heartfelt ode to the KFC Girl who was the target of his youthful desires, some scarcely believable tales of teenage sexual tomfoolery, and the brilliant “sitting on things” bit.
But…
I remember fondly the first time I saw Sam Simmons; his Tales from the Erotic Cat show was polished to a gleam, full of slick interactive multimedia, surreal content, and Simmons himself acting with complete and utter surety. So I was massively disappointed the second time I saw him, with a show chock-full of technical issues and undercooked material.
The Sam Simmons Experience is somewhere inbetween. Some of the hatstand leanings are back, but not all the confidence: he still stifles a smirk to himself occasionally, and often lapses into more conventional stand-up delivery – usually leading to a chuckle and a head-shaking “thirty-one years old.” And that’s not the Simmons I want to see; I want to the the refined Erotic Catster who had the crowd in the oddball of his kipper.
Still – great show ;)