Charlie Pickering – Thirteen Ducks (FringeTIX)
Charlie Pickering @ The Bosco
7:00pm, Tue 19 Feb 2008
It’s the same venue as last year; the weather was eerily similar, too, with the hot spell breaking. But whilst the name of The Bosco is the same, inside there’s some massive changes – air conditioning! AIR CONDITIONING in The Bosco! What a stunning advance in audience comfort. The renowned wooden seats have also been padded, but that turns out to be little more than a new coat of paint – their arse-numbing campaign continues unabated.
This night was the first in Pickering’s season, and it showed. Really. He presents the central thread early: his aim, now that he’s hit the grand old age of thirty, is to write his autobiography. Everything else is very loosely hanging off this premise, and the show – well, it just feels horribly incomplete.
The problem’s not with his delivery; Pickering is as charming and eloquent and delightful as ever. But he’s recycling a lot of material – I’m certain that two-thirds of his vignettes were in last year’s show (including the great Bernie Mac opener). In fact, the only new material that I noticed were some nice characterisations of his school principal, and the readings from B.B. King’s autobiography.
And unfortunately, that’s not enough to carry this show for me. I suppose that, had I not seen his performance last year, it might have been a different affair; but the absence of cohesion and all-round lack of polish (resorting to Insta-Death audience interactions more than once) left me wanting. That’s a shame, because Pickering still has the potential to be one of Australia’s best.