Rich Hall (aka Otis Lee Crenshaw)
Nova (Cinema 1)
10:30pm, Sun 5 Mar 2000
Score: 9
Short Review: song-tastic
Rich Hall's alter ego, the six-time married, incarcerated (for involuntary bigamy) Otis Lee Crenshaw, was joined onstage by two likeminded Texans for an hour of song and hilarity. And there were buckets of both.
Hall's standard songs are hilarious - the opener "I Was Drunk" springs to mind - but it's when he gets into ad-lib mode that the laughs run thickest. His "couple song" (this night's victims were Bill and Jenny) was an absolute classic ("spreadsheets" - "bed sheets"... brilliant!), and the not-quite-ad-libbed-but-close-enough "Adelaide song" is a classic also.
Words alone cannot express how wonderfully funny this show is - I guess I'll just give it a good score and let you find out for yourselves.
Wil Anderson - Terra Wilius: A History of Australia
Nova (Cinema 2)
8:20pm, Sun 5 Mar 2000
Score: 8
Short Review: Gut-laughs
Wil Anderson returns to Adelaide with a show that traces through the finer points of Australian history. Along the way, he has a dig at the government, the ocker Aussie male, and ponders a few more serious issues.
Wil has a great delivery style; he's basically your classic Australian comedian. Not afraid of poking fun at himself, he also manages to surreptitiously introduce material into his act that allows the most subtle of segueways into his next bit. The manner in which he does this is, in itself, a great laugh.
He lets himself down a little, though, by introducing more serious topics into the proceedings; racism and homophobia aren't great topics for laughs (where's Chelsea Lewis when you need her?), and he doesn't go chasing them either. However, you'll find that you've been gut-laughing though the rest of the show, so the few flat spots are easy to look over.
North Darling in North Alone
Nova (Cinema 2)
7:10pm, Sun 5 Mar 2000
Score: 4
Short Review: PG
Whoa, this was not great at all. North Darling, the "good looking" one of the Three Canadians, brought forth a flimsy show which struggled to get any laughs at all.
The premise of the show was that North gets stranded on a desert island; this part of the story is told at the start of the show using some clever (and amusing) puppetry, but as soon as North appears on stage the play went downhill fast.
The puppetry used throughout the show was clever enough, but got more-ish after a while, and the manner in which North (and his accomplice AJ) constantly derided their own crappy production values got more than a little irritating. On the plus side, however, the "Ode to a Dead Dolphin" was great, even if you had to sit through 2 minutes of "fighting" with an inflatable dolphin to get there.
In short, this would be a great show for kids (be warned, however, that there is a little profanity uttered during the show). This type of humour is a little beneath anyone over the age of 12.
BTW: is it me, or does anyone else think North looks like Ade Edmondson?
The Enormous Club
Uniflex Physical Theatre
2:00pm, Sun 5 Mar 2000
Score: 8
Short Review: Candlelight
Born In A Taxi, a Victorian-based company, presented "The Enormous Club", a quality bit of physical theatre. Very qualititious it was, too.
The four performers smoothly traversing the stage, interacting well with each other and providing a great deal of subtlety and humour in their movements. The true beauty in the production, however, is in the innovative use of light (large amounts of the piece was lit only by the candles which the performers held) and the clever use of the (minimalist) props.
There is a rather lengthy discussion about the premise of the show, but it isn't needed; The Enormous Club is a great bit of physical theatre without having to place any subtext to it.