If it’s appropriate for anyone to take a look back at their career in Australian stand up comedy, it’s appropriate for Rod Quantock. Loosely speaking this is how Rod Quantock: First Man Standing is packaged. I’m old enough (just) to remember Australia You’re Standing In It, a pioneering comedy show on the ABC in the early eighties, captained by Rod, and there are very few Australians who would fail to recognise his ginger countenance, even if they only remember him from his ‘iconic’ role as Captain Snooze.
From the outset, as with the majority of Rod’s work, the show is set up with an easy going, informal pace highlighted early by his mischievous use of a camera and big screen to catch out latecomers. Rod incorporates a good deal of electronic multi media in the show. As much as all this technology seems to sit incongruously on a figure such as Rod Quantock (or perhaps because of it), the combination makes for some of the best moments of the show. Rod plays with his gadgetry like a child would with a new toy and yet, although earnest in his intentions, Rod proves less competent than the average child, making for a deeply amusing scenario of a grown man struggling, in earnest, to cope with simple technology.
This show is divided into two halves, both by an intermission and content. In the first half Rod takes a look back at his forty year career in comedy which started in 1968, kicking off the show proper with a slide presentation of images from that year and, with some help from audience volunteers, relives his very first sketch performed as part of the Architectural Revue at Melbourne University. This topic consumes the first half of the show and is the most exciting for an audience of loyal followers. His approach is anecdotal and he creates the effect of being a deliciously fascinating dinner guest. This section is also of great interest to fans of the genre, Rod having been instrumental in developing the stand up comedy scene we know today in this country.
The second half take a distinct turn from the friendly, anecdotal feel of the first half. Rod has an unashamedly leftist slant on his political stand. Even the most Left Wing, Pinko, Bolshies amongst us can feel like Andrew Bolt’s bastard love child around Rod. Indeed, recently I heard someone (who, shall we say, was less than a fan) refer to him as “Rod Quaintcock”. But, schoolyard names and political leniencies aside, Rod’s political viewpoint has remained steadfast and passionate throughout his career, and it is upon this subject that he dwells during the second half of the show. True to himself he presented a broad analysis of the past fifteen odd years of Australian politics, based around the certainty that Kennett was a cunt, Howard was a cunt, and although the golden boy at the moment, K-Rudd will inevitably become a cunt. I felt, however, that he didn’t really bring anything new to the table here. It could be argued that as a retrospective show he shouldn’t need to bring anything new, and that a figure like Rod Quantock surely couldn’t look back on his career without at least a cursory mention of his great adversaries. But overall I felt the shift in the second half to be a harsh alteration and held little satisfaction for a loyal audience who’d heard this all before. Ultimately, as a comedy fan, I would have liked to hear more about the emergence of the Australian stand up comedy scene from a man who lived through it, and was and is pivotal in its identity. However there will be fans who come expecting the political slather for which Rod is so famous and I suppose this is a case of each to their own.
All that said, this two hour show is a rambling, vintage look at Rod Quantock and his career that really should not be missed by fans of Rod or fans of comedy in general. As always Rod’s tale shifts and changes as thoughts occur to him, and (Rod being Rod) it is unlikely to be the same show any two nights of the run.
FIRST MAN STANDING runs from Wednesday 6 August to Saturday 6 September, 8:00pm, Trades Hall Carlton