In Was It A Cat I Saw?, Luke Whitby presented a show that explored the love of words and wordplay…Eventually! Like many comedians faced with a themed show, Luke explored topics not exactly adhering to the subject at hand. In fact he made no mention of the language until about half way in, instead presenting stand up about Officeworks, MySpace, religion and working in a Call Centre. I could see the tenuous links to the theme, but it wasn’t until he began actually displaying humorous anagrams that he began exploring wordplay concepts.
The show took off when Luke told tales of his life as a published Performance Poet, including his epic ode “You are my Godzilla, I am your Tokyo”. This hilarious piece brought the house down with its many pop culture references and a highly physical performance. This bit alone would go down well as a tight five.
His discussion once again went into seemingly unrelated territory with an exploration of Heavy Metal but was able to be tied to the theme with some anagrams and wacky band name experiments. Revisits to his earlier topics got a similar treatment with amusing anagrams and palindromes that tried to justify their inclusion in the show. Luke did mention that he had constructed the entire show as an anagram, however due to teething problems concerning his timing of the show we were unable to accurately see this. As he whips it into shape over subsequent performances hopefully this will be a prominent feature of the show.
The use of PowerPoint was used to great affect in this show in not only the display of the many anagrams and palindromes, but an awesome opening titles that went with the cat theme. The screen may have been slightly too small for a detailed view from the back row, but the slides were sufficiently clear enough.
Luke is a brilliant stand up, exploring some interesting topics and giving it enough of a spin to make it his own. With this being quite autobiographical in parts, he could express his tales and jokes with great passion. His years as a poet would certainly have contributed some part to this polished and articulate performance.
It was a brilliant stand up show, but hardcore word junkies may come away feeling slightly cheated.
For booking details and further information visit the Fringe Website