[2015003] Simon Keck: Eating Tiger Dicks

Simon Keck @ Rhino Room – Howling Owl

10:00pm, Tue 10 Feb 2015

Simon Keck’s Nob Happy Sock was one of the best surprises in last year’s Fringe: an absolutely brilliant show, discussing incredibly dark topics, that came almost unannounced and blew my mind. And with Keck only affording his new show a short run in Adelaide (prior to taking it to Fringe World), and the opportunity to create a nice three-show run on the opening night of Festivities, it was a no-brainer to slot this performance in.

Eating Tiger Dicks sees Keck delivering lines via two mouthpieces: Tug DeLabranska, a self-help guru, is the show’s central character, cajoling the audience with ludicrous and conflicting new-age platitudes. Keck himself essentially narrates Tug’s sudden descent from all-conquering guru, through drug episodes and blackmail attempts against him, in a clever script that uses the transition between the two personae effectively. There’s a few accompanying PowerPoint slides – you’d better like your arseholes to be anthropomorphised – and a plot-line that threatens to spiral out of control before coming together for a tight finish.

But this was opening night for the show (a world premiere!), and things… well, things did not go smoothly.

Not only did Keck regularly require line readings – awkward the first time, but genuinely comical and played-for-laughs by the tenth – but his tech at the Howling Owl also struggled: with lighting controls at one end of the bar, the laptop controlling the accompanying PowerPoint at the other, and the light by which he could check the script in the middle, the tech was running a confused track up and back behind the bar all show. Slides came up early, lights dropped late, and… well, it was a little messy.

And then there was a bit of crowd interaction. Which, of course, meant Me.

Initially (I thought) dragged up for a bit of scripted banter, Keck then turned and returned to his monologue with the audience… all but ignoring me onstage. I tried to creep back to my seat, and was roundly admonished; the conclusion of my involvement – which, we were all assured, would be “worth it” – was awkward for pretty much everyone. (Keck asked for feedback at the end of the show; I suggested that the audience participant bit was “too long on stage”. Keck replied that he wanted it to be really awkward for the audience member… Mission accomplished, sir!)

But here’s the thing: even with all the opening night mistakes – the line calls, the missed lighting cues, the premature PowerPoints – Eating Tiger Dicks was still bloody funny. Indeed, some of the line calls and early glimpses at slides made parts of the show seem almost cunningly prescient… like they were part of some elaborate design to subvert the audience’s expectations. Keck’s apologies and requests for feedback at the end of the show scotched that idea, but the fact remains that I had a lot of fun with this performance… even with my incredibly awkward time on stage.

(3) Simon Keck- Eating Tiger Dicks: Self-help parody-with-a-twist shows great promise. Prescient first night flaws! #ff2015 #ADLfringe

— Pete Muller (@festivalfreakAU) February 11, 2015

[2015002] Gordon Southern – Long Story Short

Gordon Southern @ Rhino Room – Howling Owl

8:45pm, Tue 10 Feb 2015

It’s always a delight to turn up to a line-up or ensemble show to see Gordon Southern’s name on the list of performers; he’s always proven to be a ridiculously effective comedian, guaranteed to get a room roaring with gut-laughter within the confines of a ten-minute spot. But I was unsure as to whether he could maintain the mirth over a full set… but an early start to his season at the Rhino Room gave me the opportunity to find out.

Of course, the first performance of a new show is rarely the best time to evaluate such things.

Southern’s style is rapid-fire and occasionally pun-heavy, with the speed of delivery allowing potentially dubious material to pass by before secondary responses kick in; his northern suburb references would feel hackneyed if the delivery wasn’t so enthusiastic. But the bulk of his material revolves around his father, who suffers from vascular dementia – and, with my own father fading, and a mother who is beset with dementia, that material has a poignancy to it. But when Southern uses that thread to go other places – like a Costco ramble that is equal parts praising, damning, and fat-shaming – it’s pretty clear which parts of his script have had the longest gestation.

Long Story Short is clearly not fully-baked, yet. Southern is constantly referring to his notes, there’s a big sagging lull in the middle of the show from which he has to work hard to extricate himself, and his tech was still learning the “Fun Fact” and rap cues.

But Southern’s saving grave is the unflappable enthusiasm that he brings to the stage. That, combined with an audience of long-time fans (including Con the taxi-driver in the front row) who lap up every word, covers over a wealth of cracks in his material. And I have little doubt that, over time, the flatter parts of this show will be weeded out, leaving a more taut experience… but we’ll likely never see that in Adelaide. What I saw this evening was uneven and patchy; but it was also touching and funny.

(2) Gordon Southern – Long Story Short: (Close-to-home)Dad-related lols (& lulls) delivered with enthusiasm & confidence. #ff2015 #ADLfringe

— Pete Muller (@festivalfreakAU) February 11, 2015

[2015001] Greg Fleet in Ad Lib-Oration

Greg Fleet @ Rhino Room – Howling Owl

7:30pm, Tue 10 Feb 2015

I’ve always had a bit of a love/hate relationship with Greg Fleet; from the moment I first saw him (in 1998?), there was something about his style that I found compelling. But I’ve often lamented that I rarely found his shows to be the solid gold that I thought he was capable of delivering; but, many years after I last saw him perform a solo show (and after a podcast appearance reinvigorated my interest in the man’s work), I decided it was time to give Fleety another bash.

As soon as I arrived at the Rhino Room, I was accosted by Fleet’s manager: he was thrusting a six-question survey into the hands of the audience. The questions were simple: write the title for a play (“go crazy!” it suggested, throwing some of the eventual responses into eyebrow-raising relief). Name a superhero (“real” or made-up). A deity or mythical creature, a murder weapon. A vehicle. A household implement. I tried to walk a line between silly and solid with my responses, realising that these would be the fodder for his performance… it did not matter, in the end, as none of my ideas made it to air.

In a drawn-out process that screamed “opening night teething” (or “we didn’t quite think this through”), the six responses from each audient were placed into numbered jars; Fleet then took to the stage and, in his laid-back manner (whilst occasionally veering into his old-man voice), he explained the concept of Ad Lib-Oration: using responses plucked from the jars, he would improvise a story to link the fragments together. The idea, he joked, spawned from the desire to avoid the usual late-minute-show-writing panic that accompanies Fringe shows; he also assured us that it was equal parts inspiration and laziness.

And the first story – “The Merchant of Renmark” – demonstrated the potential of the idea; the title was supplemented by a Farmers Union Iced Coffee thread (laced with violent homosexuality) which drifted over centuries in a bizarre tale which Fleet somehow held together. Unfortunately, subsequent suggested titles – “The Importance of Being Earnest” and “Homer” – didn’t provide quite the same depth of comic material, though “Earnest” at least had a murder being committed using the unconscious body of a best friend’s wife.

A show like this has the potential to live or die by the audience suggestions, and I was pretty disappointed by the “ideas” submitted by the room this evening. But Fleet supplements his short ad-libbed stories with segments of his standup material which, in these shorter bursts, worked really well; his fallback old-man voice was also used to great effect, and the open references to his previous addictions were refreshing. Most impressive of all was the theatrical nature of Fleet’s performance; his NIDA training comes to the fore with a great sense of presence and timing.

The show is capped off with a three minute flurry, where Fleet tries to connect as many of the remaining suggestions together in one narrative as possible. This was a bloody amusing – if completely incoherent – way to wrap up an amusing performance… with the right source material, one imagines that Fleet could improvise some fantastic tales. This evening, however, the laughs were present, but thinner than one would like.

(1) Greg Fleet in Ad Lib-Oration: audience driven short stories kept alive by Fleet's brilliant theatrics. #ff2015 #ADLfringe

— Pete Muller (@festivalfreakAU) February 11, 2015