Australian Comedy Review

For two nights only, Melbourne was treated to 90 minutes of classic Jimeoin goodness. The audience was quite a mix of people of all ages (didn’t notice many kids though), thus showing that Jimeoin appeals to quite a large demographic. Everyone hung on his every word & laughter was plentiful. He came close to committing the “Squirrel Sin” of blaming the audience for not laughing at an early joke, but with his cheeky grin he referred to the audience as “a monster hungry for laughter that must be fed”. It was a clever tactic to turn the blame partly to himself. Being my first visit to The Famous Spielgeltent, I was quite impressed with the venue itself. It’s circular space consisted of a sunken central area of rowed seating (which obviously becomes the dance floor at the Late night club) surrounded by intimate booths. The wooden construction with many mirrorred panels & plush velvet curtains & ceiling make this a rather intimate venue despite it’s ample size. Jimeoin commented several times that there was excessive external noise from passing trams & the like, but I didn’t feel that they were distracting at all. The only really distracting noise that did invade the venue was the “5 minute bells” coming from the State & Playbox Theatres. With over 15 years in the business, he has turned the genre of observational humour into a precise art form. Gone are the “Did you ever notice…” jokes which seemed to dominate his early work. He is able to tell the audience a series of short anecdotes & stories whilst seamlessly inserting his trademark observations about human behavior & the little details of life. The material itself was a mix of classic old gear & some apparently newer stuff. Some of the new was a conspiracy theory regarding Charles & Camilla’s marriage & a couple of pieces about terrorism. The bulk of his visual humour involves his comical facial expressions, but he also did quite a bit of dancing during the show. Especially impressive was his skills in Irish Dancing, which he demonstrated again at the “Cooking Show” a few nights later. Towards the end of the show, Jimeoin reached for a guitar. Before he did so, he told us that to fill in the time he would take to pick it up, he would tell a joke using an audience suggestion. Not being known for his improvising, I was was curious to see the result of this. After he rejected a few suggestions, it was obvious he was waiting for a cue to jump into some rope. The resulting joke was a very old Irish Joke (one with the Irishman made to look the fool, not a Nationalistic one!) with the suggestions thrown in as passing references. When he finally picked up the guitar, I was expecting one of his typical quirky songs where he would speak the verses while singing the chorus but it was not to be. He instead introduced songs with funny titles (one was “Eating asparagus makes your piss stink”), strummed while the audience laughed at the title, then stopped. There was eventually some clever use of the guitar through some audio trickery where some of his guitar parts were sampled, looped & used as a backing to a series of one liners read from a notebook. There was also a visual gag that involved the help of the lighting technician. After coming back for the obligatory encore, Jimeoin concluded the show with another piece of audio trickery where his thoughts were being transmitted by the lapel microphone & a call back to one of his earlier dancing bits. As this goes to print, Jimeoin will be performing in London as part of a month long season. I’m sure all this material will go down well with the English audiences, except for his comments about London being a bit of a hole!