Rod Quantock – HAND-IN-BLOODY-HAND. The John & Janette Story (FringeTIX)
Rod Quantock @ Nova Cinema 2
8:15pm, Thu 8 Mar 2007
I make a point of catching Rod Quantock whenever he’s in town; I love his wry political meanderings, his lefty approach, his demeanor. This years pretty-much-unprepared show contains little content attributable to its title, and few surprises – but was still immensely enjoyable… as always.
The one big difference from previous Quantock shows was the addition of an “Amanda Vanstone”-penned song (to the tune of “Land of Hope and Glory”), sung by four (p)lucky audience members with musical accompaniment from the rest of the opening-night crowd. It worked pretty well, especially the bagpipe section, but ate significantly into the duration of the show.
The rest of the performance was pretty much as you’d expect – Quantock talks about his “massive” payout from the S11 protests in 2000, environmental responsibility through a carbon-neutral show, his classification as a “far left” comedian and “professional protester”, the difficulty of filling balloons with urine, cryogenics, pessimism for the future Labour Government, and the future uses of bioengineering and technology. Not really sure about his opinions of the internet, though; I’d much rather have the Net than a toilet. After all, you can shit behind a tree, but the tree won’t treat you to hentai.
Oooh, some nice digs at the media in general, and the ABC in particular. Lovely. And a bit of attempted flag burning. Bloody “Made in China” flags that refuse to burn, preventing Rod’s attempt to offend the establishment and raze the Nova by inferno.
All things considered, whilst the content remains contemporary, the style of a Quantock show doesn’t really change from one season to the next – and that’s a good thing.