Peripheral Yak (FringeTIX)
Nick Sun @ Bunka (The Austral)
10:00pm, Sat 10 Mar 2007
Last year, I proclaimed Nick Sun my comic hero. That show was a journey of self-annihilation, a challenging assault on the viewer, and some of the most enjoyable uncomfortable moments of my life – he later told me that performance was the result of burnout. This year, I vowed to see two Nick Suns – the Peripheral Yak model, and the Peripheral Yak Burnout shattered man – just to see the differences.
Not that I want to see the man broken and hurt, you understand – just… ummmm… well, maybe I do want to see him broken, because he’s bloody brilliant busted. BBB. Triple-B. He’s on the Triple-B List.
Ahem. Onto the show:
A leaner Nick Sun stands before a leaner audience – we number seven this evening, but he appears undaunted. The new svelte Sun is a result, we are informed, of a reductionist approach he’s taken to his life – he’s cut out alcohol, drugs, TV, wheat, and masturbation, though not necessarily in that order. Since I last saw him, he’s also gone on a bit of a spiritual quest to India and Nepal. But does any of this have an impact on his act?
Hell no. He still launches into his rapid-fire rambles chasing over-elaborated feelings leading into the dark, dingy, mouldy areas of his psyche, before popping out with a self-deprecating truism that gets the laugh. A classic piss & sugar one-two, but the stream of piss is far longer than any one man should be able to bear. Luckily, the payoff is sublimely sweet – fairy-floss sweet.
So, if I still did short reviews like I used to, Nick Sun’s would be: Triple-B List Uber-Piss Fairy Floss.
But somehow, that just doesn’t seem descriptive enough. Ummmm… go see Nick Sun. To only have seven people at his show is a travesty of the highest degree.
Here – go download a snippet of his work [2 MB] from his site.
(Curiously, I’d bumped into Advertiser reviewer Ewart Shaw at Brilliant Young Thing the previous night, and he’d reluctantly spoken of Sun – he wants to love him, but his criticcy brain gets in the way. But his recollection of the show he reviewed was brilliant – especially when we heard pretty much the same story from Sun himself the next day.)