Review by Steve Bennett

Jolly Andrew McClelland’s gleeful adventures normally provide a festival fillip… but this year’s attempt at something different has, disappointingly, misfired.

The simple concept is that he’s recreating a stand-up night with him playing all eight comics on the bill. But acting is not McClelland’s forte, as he’d probably be the first to admit, and the show is only really funny when he’s mucking about as himself, either as compere or when he breaks character to chuckle at the conceit.

However, ‘character’ might be too strong a word for what he does. For although his creations are all easily identifiable comedy types, from the whimsical ‘surrealist’ to the smooth-talking Irishman, their personalities are always explicitly explained, rather than coming from within.

Take the washed-up old-school Kevin Bloody Wilson-alike, Nugget Spunker, who says that his brand of non-PC humour will probably be a ‘little bit racist’, without ever displaying it, or McClelland’s cardigan-wearing, non-threatening, right-on character who carefully details his own personality flaws so the audience doesn’t have to figure them out for themselves.

McClelland is on the money with his mockery of these types, but he does it without inferring, without subtly, we’re just told it outright with the messages as heavily signposted as the Western Highway.

That mockery, too, falls between two stools – not sharp enough for the comedy nerd who would already know the stereotypes, while being too much of an in-joke for the casual consumer.

Nonetheless, there are memorable moments, such as Spunker desperately barking out his catchphrase ‘you’ve been spunked!’ to an indifferent audience (a little like British comedy wildman Nick Helm) or the Russian prop comic Leon Alpenski, explaining his baffling ‘receptacle’ comedy. But the less said about ‘Professor Richard Dawkins’ relentlessly logical approach to humour, the better. Why he’s here at all suggests the ideas ran out before the hour did.

Any of these characters might have provided a little Light Relief on a new material night with an audience dominated by comedians, but out in the harsher world of a comedy festival show, they look very exposed and under-developed.

Plus anything that comes in the way of McClelland being his joyous self has to be bad – certainly if it’s executed as haphazardly as this.

Review date: 7 Apr 2012
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Melbourne International Comedy Festival