Melbourne International Comedy Festival review by Steve Bennett

Isn’t there something just a little bit tragic about an once-anarchic band getting back together in their late-middle age, trying to relive past excesses even though their hips have gone?

It’s something the Doug Anthony All Stars – who were always as much post-punk band as they were confrontational comedy troupe – are well aware of. Back on the road 20 years after they split up, there’s no escaping these are not the men who blazed a chaotic trail through the comedy world for a decade from the mid-1980s.

Quite literally in the case of the guitarist, since original axeman Richard Fidler is now too busy with public-service radio broadcasting to join the tour; and has been replaced by sometime DAAS collaborator Paul Livingston. Paul McDermott retains a dapper, roguish charm, even if there’s grey in his temple, and Tim Ferguson… well there’s no disgusting that he’s in a wheelchair because of his multiple sclerosis, a condition that his bandmates only gingerly mention in hushed tones.

Do they hell. The notorious All Stars have never been about niceties, and McDermott insults his pal with jibes that are very close to the bone. Meanwhile Ferguson frequently interrupts the show with absurd stream-of conscious ramblings, which he attributes to the drugs he’s on – but is more likely caused by his sense of mischief.

This show – running for two-and-a-half interval-free hours – is not the full-on assault of aggressive, shock tactic humour that made them the talking point of the Edinburgh Fringe for so long. That would be unseemly, and besides, their audience has grown old with them and want nostalgia, not a full-on re-creation.

So this is a playful meander through some stories of their past with some puckish banter and loose set-pieces, all interspersed with some of their close-harmony greatest hits. Even a reworking of their earworm song Maria as a tirade of insults against hated figures repeatedly calls their targets ‘cocks’. That’s surely not the four-letter C-word they would have used 20 years ago… Still, they maintain an impish bad-taste edge, with gags about Rolf Harris and a song about ebola right off the bat.

The All Stars were a close cousin of the alternative comedy boom in Britain that preceded them by a couple of years, and tonight Maria starts as a plaintive version of The Young Ones in tribute to Rik Mayall. Livingstone’s alter-ego, Flacco, who opens the show is a welcome throwback to that time, too, with his bald head onto which a single strand of hair has been painted, his alien-like voice, and swamped by his overcoat, he exudes an otherworldly presence matched by the peculiarity of his jokes.

When Livingston joins the band, he is reduced to a mainly non-speaking role, a distant second fiddle to the McDermott-Ferguson dynamic; the latter’s crazy ramblings sometimes inspired, sometimes just a bit odd – as in his closing comments about how his MS is a reminder of everyone’s mortality that brings down. Meanwhile McDermott mockingly treats Ferguson as incapable, sitting on the line of bad taste.

Their playlist includes the serious Auld Triangle/Brendan Behan Is Dead, which demonstrates their musicality, even though they add a sly side-gag that slowly dawns; upbeat numbers such as I Fuck Dogs and their S&M G&S parody which are as daftly entertaining as ever; and KRSNA, which had to come with an explanation as to what the once-ubiquitous Hare Krishnas are.

Their music is sometimes surprisingly moving – there was always some maturity underpinning their mucking about – which has surely helped their transition from the wild men of comedy to blokes simply not prepared to act their age come so easy.

Review date: 11 Apr 2015
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Melbourne International Comedy Festival