The List Operators [FringeTIX]
The List Operators @ The Hive
10:45pm, Wed 17 Feb 2010
Groo, I didn’t like this much.
Rich and Matt – The List Operators – purport to present a sketch comedy show with lists in it. And that’s mostly true; there’s certainly a bunch of lists hanging around at the back of The Hive’s stage, and during the show they’re happy to compile lists of Countries It’s OK To Be Racist About, as well as audience racists and nobs (for the hecklers). The “Pros and Cons of Matt” sketch worked alright, too, with the broad and far-sweeping list of Cons far outweighing the specifics of the Pros.
The problem is that so much of the show seemed utterly juvenile to me; devoid of the aforementioned “comedy”. Matt’s list of favourite fruit, complete with googly eyes (and the death of Jennifer Cante-lopez later in the show). The “Hello” sketch. Even the crowd-singing closer felt pretty low-brow.
But the large crowd, who appeared to be intimately familiar with The List Operators, lapped it up. Sure, the opener “10 Ways To Start The Show” was pretty amusing, but not enough to compensate for the bits that really annoyed me. If this is the worst show I see this year, then I’d be reasonably happy – there were some decent bits – but it’s far from the best.
(Oh – and everyone in the queue was asked to write down the name of someone they wanted to apologise to, and why. Mine read…
Who: my girlfriend from 1991.
Why: for not talking to her for two weeks after she fucked up the taping of Twin Peaks.
That actually wound up being the final one they read out :)