The blurb of Lost In Tram Stations seemed to suggest a theme of Adelaide nostalgia. This was reflected in a brilliant opening video and a rather less successful closing sing a long that incorporated the potentially interesting concept. Unfortunately the rest of the night was essentially a low brow meat and potatoes stand up show featuring five South Australian comedians.
All four acts were very similar in their material, lots of base humour and many jokes that have been told many times before in one form or another so you could easily pre empt the punchlines. Some even could be dated back to the days of vaudeville, but this was a contemporary stand up setting not an ironic parody. They were clearly aiming for a particular audience; a mainstream audience who regularly watch The Footy Show. This was bawdy humour for the masses and the crowd lapped it up.
Our Emcee for the evening was Jamie Hill who bounded around the stage with great energy. He had quite an amiable stage persona and interacted with the audience well. He showed that he would be quite an adversary for drunk hecklers.
The first act proper was actor turned stand up, J J Harding. He had an extremely hyperactive stage presence but that could not make up for his handful of old weak jokes. J J even had the gall to demand applause after lukewarm responses to each joke. He ended his set with bit of half-arsed audience humiliation by giving a male punter a lap dance.
Steve Gee was next and with his arsenal of material on drugs and drink driving, was quite a good performer. He had some wonderfully dodgy visual gags and a fascinating rhythm where his calm set up was followed with a shouty punchline. His low key but still somewhat animated delivery was a joy to watch.
Craigie Terrance continued to provide the old jokes but despite a passing resemblance to Carl Barron, there wasn’t anything particularly unique about him. In his favour he did have a likable stage persona despite his constant self depreciation.
The final act was Gerry O whose schtick was musical impersonations which were performed with guitar. He chose to completely ignore the rule of threes and subjected us to fourteen variations of “Baa Baa Black Sheep”. These renditions were generally humourous in their accuracy but the lack of any additional humour led me to wonder if he had only one joke. He eventually progressed to other “parodies” but the age of the songs appeared as if he was still stuck in a time warp from his days in “Chunky Custard”. His act eventually degenerated into some straight out sing alongs to snatches of popular songs.
If you are looking for smart, innovative and sophisticated humour, you won’t find it here. If however you like your comedians crude and rude you will have a whale of a time.
Visit the Fringe Website for booking details.