The Beautiful Losers are very much a cabaret version of the rock band ‘The Sailors’. Both set out to shock audiences with songs full of profanity, sexism and racism, all performed with tongues firmly planted in cheeks and a blatant smart arse attitude. This gimmick of being offensive for shock value alone is guaranteed to obtain initial laughs, but it was also a major shortcoming in this show.
One problem was the way in which the songs are delivered, completely straight faced. If the audience wasn’t clued in to it all being a “joke”, these disturbing songs could quite easily be mistaken for the rantings of severely bitter and twisted individuals. So hate filled were the lyrics of these songs that the early numbers in their set were met with silence, save for the odd nervous titter. Towards the end of the show there was ‘The Apology Song’ in which they allowed themselves to drop the edgy personas briefly to lighten the mood. The audience banter during this song teamed with some genuinely amusing lyrics brought forth laughter but by this stage, it was probably too late.
Another hindrance to providing the laughs was the fact that while they had some interesting ideas but they forgot to actually include funny lines. Instead they relied on the shock of profanity and their dangerous characters to carry the show. The loudest laughs of the night occurred when they dropped the ‘C Bomb’, at this stage warning signs should have been flashing that the material was comedically weak. After further songs were met with minimal response, they returned this base level of humour by extending a dick joke to over two minutes and putting it to music.
Musically, The Beautiful Losers are brilliant with their stunning harmonies and fantastic instrumentation with piano and guitar, it’s a shame that their song writing doesn’t match. Most of their original songs were quite predictable in nature and overstayed their welcome. This would have been overlooked if they had any sort of interesting pay off, but the punch lines rarely turned up. A tune about phobias started out promising with some witty lyrics and clever wordplay, but soon went downhill when they switched back to the offensive gear. I could see what they were aiming for (pointing out the ridiculousness of ‘phobias’ such as Homophobia and Xenophobia) but this cleverness was lost in the offensive onslaught that comprised the rest of the show. Their handling of covers also left a lot to be desired. ‘Every step you take’, an already creepy song, was creeped out to the max but not one addition was included to make it amusing.
In their press release, they promised “titillated terror” and they deliver on this count. It’s just that this one joke concept wears thin rather quickly, perhaps suiting a short spot better than an hour length show.
‘Fresh Filth’ is on Thurs to Sun until April 29. See the “Festival Website”:http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/season/2007/show/236/ for further information.