Bag of Nails - A Life's
Work in Progress by Anthony Morgan to October 21, 2000
Mind Eater Gumbo Theatre to October 8, 2000
Both at North
Melbourne Town Hall
Reviewer: Kate
Herbert
Anthony Morgan is
back again. He says he retired from the comedy scene two year ago - but he
forgot he had no skills to survive in the real world. Oops!
Bag of Nails relies on Morgan's natural wit and fast comic
improvisation. His style is eccentric. He used to come on stage with one joke
that lasted for 45 minutes.
In this show, he gets 20 minutes of material out of
explaining why there is no Opening. Ric Birch did everything that could be done
in an Australian Opening Ceremony.
The middle bit is taken up with an ongoing explanation of
why there was no opening and he ends with a marketing strategy to sell CDs.
He prowls up and down the carpeted aisle in the room above
the library at North Melbourne Town Hall. He is hilarious, improvising his way
into new jokes about deadbeat fringe paraders who are half-way through the
anarchists handbook or about heroin addicts, his own travels to Texas, land of
country music and little else.
He reminds us of ignored Australian icons. Where were the
holden utes in the opening ceremony, or the Monaro precision drivers peeling
around little Nicki Webster?
Morgan is self-derisory, talented and under-used in the
comedy industry of TV or radio. Somebody should wake up.
Gumbo Theatre is a group of looney Japanese performers who,
in Mind Eater, goof around with a series of quirky comic narratives in a vivid
style of physical theatre.
The first is the Mind Eater about a woman obsessed with
dieting. Next is a woman looking for a soul mate who will sacrifice his life
for love. Another is a road accident and trial then a man who loses his job,
wife and life and a woman who needs cosmetic surgery. Another woman donates a
kidney and is impregnated by the doctor.
The style is idiosyncratic and distinctly Japanese. It is
comic grotesque, dipped in Japanese Butoh dance. The actors leap and shout,
grimace and sing with some live percussive accompaniment and recorded music.
the costumes are huge and compelling.
The show is often messy and loose in form but it is always
startling, silly and fun.
By Kate Herbert
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