Here's a snippet I never finished about Comedy in Melbourne. It was written on Feb 1, 1998
See next article for a different, completed article about Comedy. KH
The Melbourne Comedy Festival (up to 1998) features Overseas
acts including Greg Proops from US, Jeff Green and Bill Bailey from UK. Smaller
theatre comedy shows come and go.
The festival is huge and a little unwieldy. It
had now taken over the Town Hall and Trades Hall for three weeks a year but
nothing survives the April boom period.
The political comedy of the late 70's early 80's and the wacky,
off-the-wall stuff of the same has gone for good it seems. Quantock is the only
political animal around thank God.
Theatre restaurants have dribbled along. Naughty Nineties
Music Hall from the early 70's gave way to Dracula's and Witches Brew an
recently to Capers' which does traditional old vaudeville and panto. Where are
all the innovators now?
There was a time when
we were challenging the DADAists of the 20's or the Berlin cabaret of the 30's
with cutting edge commentary. Some of this has filtered into the fringe theatre
scene but it rarely goes further than comment. There is no comedy form social
change or for risk except Quantock.
KH
No comments:
Post a Comment