Before embarking on a stand up career in the UK, “Danny McGinlay”:comic and his high school mate set off on a trip around the USA, chasing their version of the American dream. Star Spangled Bender tells the tale of this adventure alongside a somewhat accurate presentation of the history of that country.
The majority of the show was basically Danny standing on the stage presenting the material. He made liberal use of PowerPoint slides and some wonderful animations to demonstrate key points. Despite an off kilter set up of his projection system that bled the images onto the ceiling, this worked quite well. It even allowed Danny to make some adlibbed jokes regarding these distorted pictures.
The show jumped rather abruptly from trip stories to history lesson throughout its duration, featuring topics that at times didn’t appear to relate to each other. With some perseverance, the audience would eventually make the connections as the show progressed. At times these links were slightly tenuous, but the journey to get there was well worth it. This was made so much easier with Danny’s enthusiastic delivery and superb storytelling skills.
Danny’s history lessons featured interesting, albeit a little dry, material which he was able to sex up with a number of reworkings featuring celebrities and plenty of pop culture references. These made the information go down easily and provided constant laughs. His tales from the road trip were brilliant. As well as making jokes at the expense of the Americans he was able to find the humour in the attitude of Aussies in a foreign setting. These stories were all presented as if he were telling tall tales to a group of mates at the pub. We were especially lucky on the evening I attended to have his travel buddy sitting in the audience, giving Danny plenty of opportunities for some light hearted teasing.
Star Spangled Bender is a fantastic blend of travelogue and lecture that had the punters laughing throughout.
This show runs from Tuesday – Saturday until the 21st April. Go to “Star Spangled Bender”:http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/season/2007/show/195/ for booking details.