Lawrence Leung and Andrew McClelland’s Somewhat Secret Secret Society Show
Lawrence Leung, Andrew McClelland @ The Garden Shed
8:00pm, Wed 22 Feb 2006
Score: 7
After being happily amused with Lawrence Leung’s show in FF2004, and being a inquisitive fan of secret societies in general, I was looking forward to this. First things first, though: The Garden Shed is a very odd venue. It’s small, it’ll be very humid in the hotter weather, the bark chips beneath the audience’s feet make for an atmospheric smell unlike any other venue, and the fluoros used for the house lights makes for a very subtle transition when the lights go down. Or not, as the case may be.
Anyhoo, on with the show: long-time school chums Leung and McClelland launch into a somewhat limited expose of various secret societies through the history of man. “Limited” is good in this case, because they stick to those that provide solid comedy material – and that means either sex or sheer lunacy is involved. They cover the Ku Klux Klan, miscellaneous religious sex cults, the da Vinci Code(!), try to join the odd Secret Society or two, and poke much fun at the Freemasons. Very little is said of the Illuminati, though… suspiciously little.
There’s some quality humour thrown about, and some unintentional funny stuff, too – their computer (providing quality PowerPoint and media goodness for the show) locked up, they managed to break Leung’s mother’s dinner gong, and Leung managed to spray himself in the eye with deodorant (don’t ask). Their doctored coverage of the Prime Ministerial debate from the last election was sublime, too.
The only flat spot was the faux-tears ending, but that was compensated by having the audience start their own secret society! So I’m now a member of the not-so-secret (and rather unimaginatively named, given the options available) The Evil Of Stuff. Ummmm… yes. There’s other goodies on their website if you poke around, too.
In short – not bad, not bad at all.