Charlie Pickering & Waleed Aly, March 31, 2013 ****1/2

Charlie Pickering & Waleed Aly in The World’s Problems Solved 
Sun March 31: Lower Melbourne Town Hall
Sat April 6, Sun April 14, Sun April 21: Capitol Theatre
Melbourne International Comedy Festival  
Star rating:****1/2
Reviewer: Kate Herbert on Sun March 31 

Inspired political comedy ‘Think Tank’ solves global issues

Charlie Pickering and Waleed Aly’s ‘Think Tank’, The Horizon Institute, is actually a ‘Do Tank’ (or should that be ‘Doo-Doo Tank’?) created to solve the world’s problems during four weekly discussion panels, and this first week focuses on Climate Change. 

The Do Tank is based on the ethos of ‘doing before thinking’ – sound like a few political parties we all know? – and it’s Latin motto translates as, ‘ Just crazy enough to work.”

This inspired blend of academic analysis, news panel show and political satire is not only genuinely hilarious, but it challenges the audience with its smart mix of experts, facts, figures and jokes.

With the help of climate change researcher, Larissa Brown, and wild card guest, comic, Tom Gleeson, the primary task is to determine a solution to Climate Change in an hour, and nobody can leave before consensus.

Pickering and Aly use ‘Really Bad Powerpoint’ to illustrate idiotic points, introduce current solutions and propose insanely drastic solutions – that just might work.

While Brown informs us that in five years the planet will sustain only one billion of our 8 billion population, Gleeson suggests a giant U.V. protection hat for the earth, or lots of shade cloth.

Other solutions include: switching to renewable power (Too sensible? Too expensive?);

genetically engineering smaller, vegetarian humans dosed with oxytocin; giant mirror arrays in space; or spraying sulphur into the atmosphere.

Pickering and Aly make a spectacular, brainy, comic double act, and their solutions, however wacky, sound far more sensible than doing nothing.

By Kate Herbert