Group stand up shows are the perfect way to get on the road to comedy festival stardom. In their bid, Sydney comics Shane Matheson, Eric Sutton and Oliver Phommavanh have pooled their resources as The Zinger Machine to showcase their brilliant stand up abilities.
Sitting on a chair stage right was the titular machine Zingy. He did introductions, interacted occasionally with the comics and let loose with the odd ‘Zing, Zing!’ to punctuate some of the jokes. While his modulated voice was a little hard to understand at times due to the front bar noise, he was so cute that it didn’t matter too much.
Joining the trio was local lass Ally Syn who acted as warm up and MC for the show. She was bubbly, perky and slightly cynical, delivering a hilariously solid set of tales from her life as a student. This young newcomer to the scene was impressive, making her one to keep an eye out for.
Eric was the first of the fellas to take the stage and took command in a brilliantly droll and deadpan manner. He visited a number of well worn topics but took the material into highly imaginative and often unexpected directions. With a vocal style similar to John Clarke, he knocked us over with plenty of clever jokes.
Eric promised more upbeat entertainment to follow his low energy set and Shane definitely fulfilled that promise. Beginning with literally ‘old’ material you could tell that he was a comedic loose cannon that would have us in stitches. Despite not being the strongest singer, he treated us to some wonderfully strange songs and wacky dancing. He launched himself into some highly physical character work, even interacting with himself with some exhausting rushing to and fro. He managed to make the most mundane of topics surprisingly hilarious. He was an ‘unhinged’ comedy genius!
Oliver bills himself as a practitioner of the zingy one liner, but his stage presence and execution didn’t suggest this. Where you would expect a loud and brash guy with a rapid fire barrage of jokes, his quiet demeanour and gentle pacing was the opposite. Despite how problematic that appeared on paper, he was strangely compelling to watch and delivered plenty of laughs. His short spot on relationships comprised of two or three sentence ideas that got to the point and were a welcome respite after the high energy lunacy of Shane.
Even though it was only fleetingly set up at the start of the show, obviously assuming that everyone had read the festival program blurb, they managed to tie up the story of Zingy and his function in the show. It involved all the cast on stage engaging in some wonderfully silly Pantomime wackiness, almost like the ending of a Goodies episode.
The Zinger Machine was an impressive display of awesome young talent in a brilliantly inventive structure. Truly one of the hidden gems of the festival.
Visit the comedy festival website for bookings and further details