Review: Josh Thomas In Things That I Have Said Before

Josh Thomas in Things That I Have Said Before
Comedy Store, Moore Park
Until 7 November
Tickets $15-22
Bookings (02) 9357 1419
Critic’s Rating 6/10


As published in the Sun Herald

Living most of my life in darkened theatres, I didn’t know who Josh Thomas was when my editor told me to go and review him. He’s the guy from that generation show, my friend said. I still didn’t recognise him, which probably says more about me than him.

The first thing you notice as he shuffles on to the stage is how young he is. And he knows how to joke about it. In fact, the majority of his skit is about how young he looks.

There’s the jokes about facial hair, how he looks like an adult baby (or Ellen DeGeneres) and his nervousness around women.

It’s all par for the course and it makes girls between the ages of 16 and 22 giggle.

That’s until he takes the lid off and he lets fly with his more R-rated material – and then suddenly older cackles come from the crowd and the teenagers are left behind.

Blending coriander, marzipan and abortion is just the start of it. And he always acts relieved when the dirty jokes get a response. But he’s always got that glint in his eye that gives you the suspicion the he knows he’s funny. And he is.

Review: Best of British

As published in the Sun Herald

Best of British
The Comedy Store, Moore Park
Until 29 August
Tickets $10-30
Bookings (02) 9357 1419
Critic’s Rating 7/10


There must be a school of comedy somewhere in the British Isles with the motto: ‘Never let the truth get in the way of a good story’.

English comedians have this innate ability to blend true stories with blatant exaggeration in a dry manner.

If such a school exists then both Jeff Green (right) and Eddy Brimson would have been at the top of the class.

Brimson could be the type of person you suddenly find sitting on a bar stool next to you. With a physical presence larger than his modest frame, he’s exudes an energy as he talks about the antics he gets up to at social events (don’t fall asleep at anything he’s attending).

Green is the quieter of the two as he expresses amazement at the world around him in style similar to Tony Robinson, who played Baldrick in Blackadder.

With breathy rambles, he draws you in to look at something closely, luring you into a sense of comfort, before he electrifies you with a cutting observation dripping in sarcasm.

It’s that sense of surprise that makes the British so funny and a quality Brimson and Green thrive.

Laugh at Danger

Preview article on hardcore clowns, The Dirty Brothers, published in the Sun-Herald.


They have been labelled "kamikaze clowns" by the Opera House and one of the performers in the sideshow troupe The Dirty Brothers admits things sometimes get out of hand. “Our shows always create a bit of an OH&S nightmare for theatres,” the Great Gordo Gamsby says with a laugh.

“It’s always fun filling out those forms for theatres. When you start talking about how we’re going to be climbing up a ladder and angle-grinding sparks onto somebody … that just raises all sorts of issues.”

For Gordo, whose signature act is to pierce a hatpin dressed in Hawaiian flowers through both of his cheeks, it's all part of the job of creating theatre that strives to make beautiful and evocative images.

“People like to see others push their bodies to the extreme and do things that they couldn’t fathom doing in their own mind,” he says.

The Dirty Brothers will be performing their new show, The Dark Party, as part of the Sydney Comedy Festival. They form part of a recent resurgence of sideshow performance, in which groups like the Jim Rose Circus and Tokyo Shock Boys have gained worldwide popularity.

The three Melbourne based performers (who share a collective history in theatre, circus and commedia dell‘arte) have recently come from packed houses at the Adelaide Fringe where they performed their dark clown routine.

“Sideshows did die out for a while – but it’s no longer 'pay your ten cents and gawk at the freaks'. Now it’s based on more rock'n'roll sideshow with an emphasis on creating extreme visceral theatre,” he explains.

“It’s all about creating images and we’ve taken pieces of our own lives with characters and we’ve built a show around it as much as we can."

Gordo is joined by Shep Huntly, who plays a broken man at the end of his tether, and Patrick Bath, the dark and fun-loving clown (who leans towards the more traditional clowning character).

Using silent films and famous Buster Keaton skits as inspiration, the group are aware of the centuries old sideshow tradition they follow when travelling troupes would shock audiences with anything from bearded ladies to fire eaters.

“We like the audience to make up the story in their own minds and we try to get the audience to really feel for the characters. So when you see me putting a screw through my face, you’re actually feeling the emotions the character is going through.”

Gordo waited until he was an adult to try his more extreme stunts. "I didn't do any of that stuff as a kid and I don't like seeing it as self-mutilation - it's more about creating art. I do it to create images," he says.

So is there anything this kamikaze clown won’t do? “Shep attaches a car battery to his nipples and I tried that once. I don’t want to ever do that again.”


The Dark Party plays at the Sydney Opera House from April 29 to May 3. Phone (02) 9250 7777 or see sydneyoperahouse.com.

Interview with Dylan Moran

This is an extended version of my interview with Dylan Moran published in the Sun-Herald.

Dylan Moran is very serious when it comes to words. “I really miss the way language is treated. Because whether it’s Obama or a taxi driver we’ve all got something to say, we’ve got a vernacular, a spin on the words,” he says.

“But now everyone’s twittering. These new technologies, they’re a distraction. I mean, doesn’t Twitter limit what you can say to 140 characters?” he asks me as he sips on a lemon, lime and bitters in the gardens of his Sydney hotel.

The Irish comedian, actor, writer and star of the famous Black Books comedy series is in Australia on a tour of his latest stand up show What It Is. When you meet Moran you can see a bit of the cynical Bernard Black character in his demeanour but it’s his calm awareness which is most striking.

“One thing I’ve noticed about language isn’t just you learn from the older generation but you cling to the younger generation and I’ve noticed it come out in my comedy. Sometimes I’ll just say ‘thing’,” he says with a County Meath inflection making it sound more like ‘ting’.

“Thing will refer to half of what I’m talking about – ‘get the thing, where’s the thing, it was beside the thing’”.

“And even ‘like’ has crept into my language and it used to drive me insane. I’d be sitting next to somebody of a certain age - and this sounds like an old bastard thing to say - but I can’t hear anything else except for the word ‘like’. I end up counting them and someone will come up to you and I’ll just say ‘nineteen!’ And they’ll be ‘nineteen what?’

“They said ‘like’ 19 times!”

“And it’s not just localisms or Dublinisms or Irishisms."

"My father once told me ... he was in the Aran Islands, these small islands off the coast and he was in this very very quiet pub.”

“And there was nothing stirring, there was dead silence, just the ticking of a clock on the wall and he said to the barman ‘for want of passing the time or pleasantries, do you ever get busy in here?’”

“And the barman, who was cleaning a glass, didn’t even look up and he said, ‘What difference would it make in a hundred years?”

“It’s a totally different take on how to spend your time.”

“But I’m not talking about poetic language. I’m just talking about the ordinary discourse, the chat and the value accorded to it - it’s immense in Ireland which I think it isn’t in Britain.”

“Australians are pretty good at passing the time of the day. I mean, I’ve laughed out loud at some of the ordinary chat and the slang of Australia – it’s very rich.”

“Irish culture though is in the mash-up of European culture anyway – and touring [theatre] companies would one time be very important in Ireland and even do Shakespeare in the hills.”

For Moran who immersed himself in the plays of Irish writers Samuel Beckett, George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde as a teenager and sees Jackie Mason as a comic master, words are very important to his work and his Irish identity.

“Ireland is such a talky culture,” he says. “You walk into an Irish pub and it’s a huge drone of everybody talking and the only way to shut someone up is to tell a better story. So for me it was a kind of training in a way.”

“I mean, you go to the pub to drink a pint, but its about the talk. That was one of the things when I started out, because that’s the last thing you’d want to see when you walked into a pub – a big television there – or a stage with a microphone.”

“When I was in Ireland and started doing this [in the early 1990’s] there just wasn’t a tradition of stand-up. You would have had story tellers, the fireside chat and that tradition is very strong,” he explains. “But there was no stand-up because it was redundant. So then I caught the boat and moved to London,” he says.

“Because there’s one club in Dublin where you cut your teeth and there’s 15 to 20 comedians in the front row, it’s no joke.”

“So then, if you wanted to do it, you had to get on the boat where there’s a hundred clubs in London and that’s how you can making your living doing stand-up.”

“But it’s quite different now. Everyone has that TV-presenter type profile now, which I never had and they are now a jack of all trades in media things, they present things, they do things and they appear on panel shows – you know – they’re like a talking head.”

Since his move to the UK not very much has changed for Moran aside from the size of the venues he plays. After twenty years on the circuit he still just tours with a minimal operation with a producer and publicist.

“It’s a pretty lo-fi operation – just the microphone, lights and me. This isn’t Starlight Express or A Streetcar Named Desire – it’s just words and a guy” he says.

“But that’s by no means limiting. I went to see Jackie Mason and he’s what 70 years old and I went to see him for his words. What he does with all his Yiddish and his rhythm – it just makes me laugh.”

“He’s a master at what he does. He’s one of the greats and it’s amazing what he does physically. I mean he’s not an athletic guy – he’s a keg to look at – a keg with a wig – and he just makes you laugh with what he does. You can be ten rows back and he just makes you laugh.”

“I saw Tom Waits recently in Edinburgh and I know its music but its very theatrical and his set-up has a bit of a rig and effects.”

“And he loves all that Weimar, Kurt Weill stuff with all the old rock … all that Trubadour Tradition with some old amplifiers hanging up in some mesh.

“And he stands there all hirsute, hanging off the microphone bellowing at you. It was very effective … I just wish I could hear him better.

For Moran it’s not only words which are serious - it’s also comedy.

“Australian audiences are quite good. Some audiences in London have that crossed armed feel – come and entertain me feel – the ideal audience is one which is just open.”

“The most difficult thing in comedy is to occupy the present tense. It’s such an important facet to be fully actively present - but if you’re minds on other things or you’re worried, you’re depleting your possibilities for that show,” he says.

“When I write I want to be create precise description of things but I don’t want to be over written. You know a mile off when dialogue sounds staged. You don’t want that and it’s very important you don’t get that.”

“I once saw this review of a Ben Elton show who was so impressed with the ad lib, and he went back and saw it again and saw the exact same ad lib and that’s a basic theatrical skill – to be able to pass of what seems like improvisation as being in the moment – technically that’s very difficult.”

“I improvise – and its part of my limitation. I wouldn’t be able to go on the road with a set text. I wouldn’t get any relief - all I’ve got is me and I get bored of me.”

“You have to break it up a bit. I couldn’t bear to know what I was going to do every night – it would kill me. I mean I have a structure and it’s like a little Lego set you construct with the audience.”

“Each night you’re turning all your switches on to put the material over and to get it across to people and beam it into every single person there as much as you possibly can,” he says.

“You live and die by your last gig.”