“Dave Callan”:comic in Dance of the Flame Retardant Monkey is WEIRD! Don’t go expecting that the strange title is of the kind used by Ross Noble to front his normal silliness. The title here is significant and related to the evolution of Man, which is signified magnificently in his opening binary PowerPoint presentation. While the strains of the Bone Palace Orchestra grind out the song “We’re all just Monkeys” the two screens portray contrasting and complimenting images and film footage, often of apes dressed as humans or acting like humans and people behaving like animals. I was particularly amused by the photo of Hitler beside a picture from www.Cats that look like hitler.com. All of his audiovisual work in this show is spot on in timing and so on. There has been a lot of work put in and he discreetly works the controls himself.
We were then subjected to an overly long introduction to the show by a Steven Hawkings type computer voice that included jokey references to Hal from ‘2001 a Space Odyssey’. This speech became too annoying as the grating voice dragged on. It was just so difficult to understand and required a long period of concentration to work out what was going on. The Devil appeared in the amusing guise of the evil Clippy from Word for Windows and offered Dave a guaranteed successful Comedy Festival show for the price of his soul. This is where I started to get a bit confused.
Suddenly we were on the set of some sort of Sunday afternoon arts programme on the ABC with Dave’s yobbo TV Host. We were then introduced to another character called Alistair who got into the deeper points of shakras (he doesn’t explain what these are), enlightenment and why men are still obsessed with consuming things such as shiny stones called diamonds, violence and addictions to various drugs and so forth. He also suddenly had a go at criticising Russia and I’m not quite sure why.
I felt the characters he performed for most of the show alienated the audience. We had come to see comedian Dave Callan, but instead were presented with a rather stuffy lecturer who was not particularly warm or funny. Dave himself acknowledged that the show wasn’t being funny enough and broke out of character to immediately gain the laughs and the goodwill that the show was lacking. After a particularly loud heckle (one word ”Terrible”) and a sprinkling of people noticeably walking out, Dave softened the character work a bit and put a little more of himself into it. I’m not sure why Dave felt he needed a character to do the show for him about all the interesting things he’s been reading and discovering. He certainly found absurdity in the points he was making and the odd laugh but sadly wasn’t able to get across his enthusiasm in a very accessible way.
To my mind this was more of a highly intellectual Fringe show than a Comedy Festival show. If you are looking to sit back and have a laugh at some Dave Callan Stand-up, this is not the show for you but if you enjoyed his surreal outings with Sam Simmons, you may find some gems to enjoy here.
‘Dance of the Flame Retardant Monkey’ is performed Tues to Sun until April 29. Check out the “Festival Website”:http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/season/2007/show/447/ for booking details.