Comedy

Over the last few weeks a comedy festival has run across New Zealand (it actually ended a little while ago, but I haven’t got round to blogging about it until now). It’s originally called the NZ Comedy Festival. 

Every night saw a host of different performances from stand-up through to comic plays at various venues around town. There’s a mix of antipodeans and comedians from further afield.

I made it along to three shows, each time with Angela, my comedy partner in crime from work. Here’s a quick run-down on what we saw and what I thought.

You can’t beat Wellington (on a good day) – this was a sitcom style show with a cast of 6. The setting was a coffee shop and the venue was a actual café, with the show carrying on between the tables, which was a nice touch. The plot centred on the owners of the coffee shop trying to cash in on the Rugby World Cup by becoming an official venue. They managed to achieve this through some underhanded means, but were then their plans fell apart. There were some really funny parts to the show, with lots of local jokes. But at times it was a bit slow moving and could have done with a bit more work on the script.

Mark Watson – the second show we saw was a Welsh stand-up. I hadn’t heard of him before, but he’s reasonably well known and has been on mock the week and other shows. His act was fantastic and had the whole audience laughing more or less non-stop for an hour. He had a very informal style, with lots of engagement with the audience and self-mockery. This was my favourite of the three gigs.

Jeremy Elwood – this was the final gig we saw and the tickets were free as a colleague had got hold of them from a newspaper giveaway and then couldn’t go. Elwood is a Kiwi comedian. He was the most political, making quite a few jokes about NZ current affairs and I was pleased to know what he was on about. He also did some guitar based comedy. Now I’m always quite dubious about this idea, although I’ve seen it a couple of times. His first two songs were ok, but nothing special. He then did a great closing piece where he improvised around a couple of members of the audience, with people shouting out different musical styles that he then performed the next part of the song in. It was a real feat to be able to do it that spontaneously and the audience weren’t generous with their suggestions.

It was a good festival and all the gigs seemed pretty much full. An annoying feature was that because they had several acts performing at each venue during the evening you were only let in just before it started and then herded out again right after the show, which got a bit frustrating. Aside from that, I really enjoyed it.

I’d heard that Kiwi audiences generally weren’t keen on the heckling/put down style of comedy that is common in England. Preferring a less confrontational, laid-back approach instead. I can hardly make definitive statements on the basis of two gigs, but they did both pretty much back that view up.