A face seen regularly on the Melbourne stand up circuit, “Evan Jones”:comic has developed for this year’s festival an all singing, all dancing comic spectacular of show, appropriately entitled the Extravaganza, Pandemonium and Comic Spectacular.
After a somewhat biblically dramatic, but rather low tech opening, Evan presented material about relationships and childhood that seemed to be essentially therapy on stage. This is well-trodden stand up material but what kept it interesting was the manic way in which he presented it, complete with simple props that illustrated his ideas perfectly. Adding to the chaos was a number of technical hiccups and forgotten props that came close to undoing the show, but actually introduced spontaneity to the proceedings. His experience in Impro certainly came into play that evening.
This section of the show involved a lot of Panto-esque call and response for the audience, which came dangerously close to overkill. Amid this audience interaction he managed to involve a couple of punters in demonstrating some of his points in a slightly embarrassing but not very threatening way.
The show really hit its straps when Evan launched into a long story about a love triangle between Evan, a girl named Rachel and his goldfish. He got the audience involved by providing them with material to create sound effects for a crucial moment in the story. This fantastical, absurdist tale was the highlight of the show.
The show ended with a sing along song that neatly tied up all the loose ends, perfectly relating his initial relationship material to the story. While Evan didn’t possess the greatest singing voice, he got away with it by presenting it as a semi rap and getting the punters enthused about joining in the chorus.
Extravaganza, Pandemonium and Comic Spectacular contained a wide range of concepts and employed many varied theatrical techniques to engage the audience. We witnessed magic tricks, mime and dangerous encounters with props. Evan threw himself bodily into the performance and demonstrated a great talent for physical comedy that turned this into a wonderful roller coaster ride of a show that kept us laughing throughout.
Evan is performing Tues and Turs to Sat until April 28. See “Evan Jones”: http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/season/2007/show/380/ for booking details.