Review by Julia Chamberlain

Character comedy! Physical comedy! Circus Gorbachev! And Jody Kamali. Colourful, noisy and chaotic, this struck me at times as a street performance dragged indoors.

He certainly uses the skills of the street, where a performer will frequently spin out a physical routine for half an hour, with a lot of gesturing, cajoling and bravado. But Kamali had more than one routine, and a notion of a Grand Guignol story within a story which smacks of Roger Corman or Hammer Horror: a tale of a circus where the performers are gradually being picked off by a mystery assailant.

It is intentionally a bit crap, poking fun at circus skills, silent film acting styles, clowning. Fabulous Fernando has a cod Russianish accent with vowel sounds that belong to another faraway land, the sort of voice that might offer you ‘one more waf-fer thin mint’. I had the feeling Kamali had done a weekend clowning course to pick up the standard ideas: plastic bag juggling, costume change, flapping about with his mum’s scarf, dancing with household objects. He alluded to the skills that are needed without actually using them, a bit like watching Tommy Cooper mess up a magic trick but then realising he couldn’t actually do it anyway.

Kamali had a lot of charisma, which in this case means he’s good looking and with more front than Harrods. He was watchable and works hard, making effortful changes round the back of what looks like a tiny Punch and Judy booth-cum-beach hut. producing props, wigs, joke teeth and severed limbs aplenty. The audience went quite doolally for this silliness, with enthusiastic people using props on stage with more polish than the protagonist.

Without doubt he was watchable, his eyes blazed as he fixed each member of the audience with a look and narrated the action in the present tense like a precocious seven-year-old showing off with a party piece. I get that the whole thing was a piss-taking parody of pompous cabaret, Cirque du Soleil pretensions, and even I couldn’t help but be suckered in to the stupid, bag waving finale. But why pastiche skills that you don’t have when you’re not offering anything in return except a talent for shamelessness? It’s an uncynical, kind, childlike show and seemed to delight some people., even though you may have seen it all before. By the end, you didn’t know anything about who he was or what he cared about, found funny, or could originate rather than imitate – which I found frustrating.

Review date: 18 Aug 2015
Reviewed by: Julia Chamberlain
Reviewed at: Underbelly Bristo Square