“Alison Bice”:comic is an extremely talented young comedian. However her new show “The Wizard of Bice” doesn’t quite showcase that brilliance.
This is Alison’s first solo show and she has ambitiously taken on a heavily woven theatrical venture, once again, new territory for her.
This show is loosely referential to the film “The Wizard of OZ”. It recounts Alison’s escape from Lilydale. The start of this show sees Alison’s attempts to get into the awards night for the comedy festival. Although there are some really big laughs here for the likes of me, mostly this part of the show is a bit too ‘industry – in – jokey’ to work for a broader audience.
The journey into Oz or ‘Bice’ is accompanied by some fantastic and funny animation work which aesthetically is very striking and could become a piece of entertainment in it’s own right. Alison does a lot of interacting with these animations but unfortunately several of the cues here were noticeably off, disrupting a lot of the suspension of disbelief. This is a smaller aspect of a larger problem in that Alison’s acting skills are not quite good enough, as yet, to pull off such a particularly theatrical piece.
Alison is at her best when she plies her stock and trade – the darkly absurd – and there are many moments scattered throughout the show when she pulls this off. In fact the biggest laugh of the show comes from a moment when she steps out of character and delivers a short set out of her regular stand up repertoire.
In the end this show is a bit let down end by a lack of overall cohesion. However it certainly has a many good laughs along the way it and it certainly gets real brownie points for trying something different and innovative.
This show runs Tuesday to Sunday until the 29th April. For more details go to the MICF “website”:http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/season/2007/show/318/