By Rod Quantock
Trades Hall, Tues to Sat, July 23 to August 15, 2009
Reviewer: Kate Herbert on July 23, 2009
Stars:****
Published in Herald Sun, Melbourne
ROD QUANTOCK'S latest comedy show could be called Quantock’s War on Climate Change Deniers. No one does political comedy like Quantock and this show is comical scare mongering at its most effective – and strangely accurate.
It’s not often a comedian wants to send you home “rigid with fear” but this is Quantock’s aim. “If climate change doesn’t scare you sh…less, you just don’t get the science.”
His scathing attacks are directed at all sides of politics. His hit list includes Labour pollies, Peter Garrett – rock legend and Environment Minister who Quantock believes sold out – and Penny W(r)ong. Independent Senator Stephen Fielding gets a huge serve for being a simpleton about Climate Change. Even Maggie Thatcher warned us about climate change in 1989. Now, that’s scary!
Quantock’s shows took a technological leap over the last few years. He now uses a data projector and real theatre lights. The show opens with images from the Hubble Telescope. However, he still entertains us with low-tech chalk and blackboard and the History of the Universe is performed by audience volunteers, including the Big Bang depicted by a bloke leaping up and shouting, “Bang!”
It is Quantock’s gift to take terrifying data and turn it into jokes that make you think. There are worrying statistics about the increase in carbon dioxide in the air, sea levels and ice melts. He provides a hilarious perspective on the senselessness of carbon trading and proves that carbon has the Devil’s number, 666. He even considers doing a carbon neutral show because his microphone lead is directly connected to the coal-fired power station.
He attacks, brown coal burning and the Premier’s choice to build freeways for more cars to burn more oil. His cynical view that people will be less interested in the Climate Change discussions in Copenhagen than what Princess Mary is wearing is likely to be true.
He creates a wonderfully bizarre link between people, water oil and food that predicts us eating each other in future when everything runs out and we are living in 70 degree heat. We even get to choose who we want to eat first.
Go see Rod Quantock and be afraid. Then, as he insists, “Go and do something!” Oh, and log on to www.350.org, the Global Warming Action site.
By Kate Herbert
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