At The Diggers' Room,North Melbourne Town Hall
until October 9, 1999
Reviewer: Kate
Herbert
Don't kiss Will
Anderson. He's got glandular fever. It's amazing he can stand up at all
much less do stand-up comedy. Death wish?
Anderson is really funny and overwhelmingly charming, even
with the teenage kissing disease. His brand new show, Terra Wilius, is peppered
with frequent "I've been sick" excuses that are completely
unnecessary.
The new material is built around Australian history, a
subject that seems to have left the national curriculum entirely. The Diggers'
Room, which hides out the back of the North Melbourne Town Hall, is the ideal
venue.
It is the meeting room of the Armed Forces League, the
organisation which competes with the RSL for amputation stories and jingoism.
Anderson cleverly milks ten minutes of gags out of the Aussie flag, the armed
forces memorabilia and an authentic sign which reads, "No Swearing in this
Room."
Anderson has a rapid response time that is barely affected
by his illness. Before he rolls headlong into the history, he preambles around
TV game shows such as Catch Phrase and the mindless Who Wants to Be a
Millionaire. Eddie Maguire gets a well deserved pasting.
He paces like a caged lion, pinning audience members with
earnest eyes and winning looks (and a far too seductive hand on the reviewer's
knee!) as well as doing clever and socially relevant material. He has a go at
the Aussie bloke and his homophobia then bumps into history again, managing to
prove, by a circuitous route beginning with convicts, that 96% of the
population is potentially bisexual.
He challenges our ignorance. "Does anyone know the name
of the first Australian Prime Minister?" "Who wrote the
constitution?" Through his comedy, he alerts us to our apathy and inertia.
We might mumble, "Who cares?" but Anderson nudges us to feel guilty
and a bit embarrassed at our disinterest.
He has a sharp intellect, an informed mind and a quick wit.
I suspect he has more acerbic social and political satire up his sleeve, or in
his little notebook. I also suspect that, more often than he would like, he
succumbs to the lower common denominator of comedy because the laugh is quicker
and louder.
The average age and
IQ of his audience would probably leap by tens if he upped the amount of
sophisticated humour. He deserves a wider audience.
by Kate Herber
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