Accidental Identity is the tale of Tim (Matthew Whitty) who, despite overwhelming optimism and confidence, constantly gets the short straw. On his journey to find purpose and identity he encounters all manner of shonky characters (played by Jessica Matthews, Christian Pisasale and Christopher Cole) who try their hardest to keep Tim from his dreams.
This play was based in the humour of misfortune and took great pleasure in extending it to the extreme. Every character introduced to the plot were of exaggerated grotesqueness, each out to inflict further punishment or humiliation on our hero. Tim took plenty of pratfalls, instigated witty wordplay with his literal understandings and took plenty of humorous abuse. Flying in the face of conventional plot development, he was given little character growth in order to maintain the constant hostility towards him. This came dangerously close to being a one joke show at times, but they were careful enough to include enough variety to keep things entertaining.
The script included numerous clever self referential lines that did a brilliant job at blurring the on stage action with the mechanics of the play; even the tech guy popped up on stage during a brilliantly silly group song. Musical numbers featured throughout the performance, generally as a device to teach Tim a life lesson about his follies and the miscreants he encountered. They ranged from enjoyable but slightly repetitive, to fantastic and full of ideas. Often the joke was in the elaborate performance of the song rather than the lyrics.
In a convenient tie in with this Easter Saturday performance, religion featured heavily. Swipes were taken at all denominations, both pointing out stereotypical shortcomings of each and beating up Tim for his naivety. Most of the filmed sequences featured Jesus and seemed to be tenuously linked to a good versus evil battle for Tim’s soul, but this wasn’t expanded upon beyond the introduction. A recurring fight between Santa and Jesus was similarly redundant, included for the sake of silliness. Other videos used to separate scenes were wonderfully bizarre commercials that utilised lots of strange images collected from the internet; they were interesting but not vital to the plot.
The cast put in wonderful performances, hamming it up when required to inhabit the many larger than life characters. Backed by guitar, all were brilliant at belting out the songs, showcasing their talent at musical theatre.
Accidental Identity was a fun perverted morality tale that had toes tapping and mouths laughs.
Visit the Comedy Festival Website for booking details.