By Simon Kennedy at Trades Hall October 2 to 19, 2002
Reviewer: Kate
Herbert
The Angina Monologues
begins with the promise of being a challenging, dark comic walk through death. The title of Simon
Kennedy's one-man show is attention grabbing. The opening story, about his dad
dying from angina when Simon was nine, is interesting and risky.
There is definitely promise
but not all is fulfilled. The Angina Monologues
is more a stand-up comedy show than a series of theatrical monologues.
Kennedy has charm
and his ideas are good. But some of his material and the loose structure of his
show let him down.
His gags and stories
range from smoking through serial killers, Adelaide, McDonald's, Work Safety, paternity and men's obsession with lingerie.
He draws much humour
from he unlikely collision of images or ideas. Why is giving up smoking like
masturbation? Toddlers as vigilantes
One clever twist of
facts deals with actor Robert Wagner's relationship to Adelaide serial killers.
He uses old slides
of road accidents with police and ambulance in attendance. These are funny partly
because of their 1960s period and goofy characters. Kennedy has not yet worked
out exactly how to make them work as parody.
The show is too loose.
It feels as if it needs a director and a script editor to tighten up both the comic
material and Kennedy's performance.
He employs some
recurring gags such as the slide that reads in huge letters after each problem is
raised, What do you do?
The shifts between
topics need to be smoother and Kennedy feels just a little uncomfortable on stage.
With a stand up comic, we need to feel secure and safe.
Which brings me to
the one part of the show that needs to be overhauled.
Kennedy coaxes onto
stage a reluctant audience member and makes him responsible for making the
resuscitation gag work. One rule of audience participation is Look after the audience
member. Make him feel safe.
The poor man was
most obliging but was embarrassed and profoundly uncomfortable with the heavy
responsibility and focus put upon him.
He show is entertaining
but the variable quality of material makes it too long at a full hour.
By Kate Herbert
No comments:
Post a Comment