[2015154] Fancy Boy Variety Show
Fancy Boy @ Producers Warehouse
11:00pm, Thu 12 Mar 2015
I can’t remember who initially hyped Fancy Boy to me… but, from an advertising perspective, they did absolutely the right thing, because my brain built up expectation for this show beyond any reasonable limits. And that was kinda a bad thing… but also totally appropriate for the bizarre performance that I witnessed.
Stuart Daulman acted as emcee for the eponymous Variety Show, and wrangled the acts in the guise of a bad (read: terrible) South African standup comic. The acts themselves came from the cast of five(?) who’d assembled for this edition of the show: there was some bad “French” standup, followed by the Stick Men, who each managed some decent laughs; Puppetry of the Anus, on the other hand, were hilarious in the build-up, but the joke died real quick.
But then came the Free Speech Crew, who “…overcame the communist fascist republic dictatorship of Australia by throwing cum at Princess Diana” to show that free speech (and rape jokes where a victim is in the audience) are always good payoffs. Mixing current comedy tropes (both good and bad) with a bunch of non sequiturial abstract nonsense totally paid off here… but the undoubted highlights of the Variety Show were the intermittent appearances of the Amputee Dance Team – Thriller and Time Warp were great fun, but their performance of Macarena was nothing short of genius.
Fancy Boy Variety Show is apparently intended to be a free-form character comedy show, where any comedian (not just the Fancy Boy regulars) can come and try out new, potentially offensive (or just plain wrong) characters in a relatively safe space. Much is made of the Fancy Boy policy of “absolutely no refunds under any circumstances”; but, to be fair, when you have material as bizarre as this, it’s kinda fair enough – the average off-the-street punter is probably not going to hang around for long in this show. But, given the audience seemed to be mostly populated with other artists and comedians this evening, I don’t think that there would have been many asking for refunds.
(154) Fancy Boy Variety Show: WTF. Amputee Dance Team, Stick Men, and Free Speech Crew were all awesome. But… WTF?!?? #ff2015 #ADLfringe
— Pete Muller (@festivalfreakAU) March 12, 2015