It’s tough to think of a better venue for a show about judgment day than the court room of the Old Melbourne Gaol, the venue for excellent new show Apocalypse Soon. You are ushered through the forbidding corridors through one of the massive wooden doors into the vaulted, cathedral-esque space – the same courtroom where Ned Kelly was sentenced to be hanged. If that wasn’t unnerving enough, the room is completely dark except for a single light under host Benjamin Crellin’s face as he sits in the sentencing booth, giving the illusion of a disembodied, spectral head in the centre of the room.
This forbidding opening soon warms after the lights raise and Crellin’s engaging personality comes to the fore. It takes a lot of energy and confidence to fill a space this daunting, but fortunately the kiwi comedian has both quantities in spades. It’s a lightly structured show, with Crellin using the general sense of the end times that has seemed to pervade the world more and more in recent years as a skeleton to hang rants from topics as wide-ranging as the war on terror and New Zealand’s over-enthusiasm to be a part of it; the large hadron collider; and his own struggle with constantly being mistaken for a Neo-Nazi (except in Melbourne, where he’s mistaken for a Buddhist). You get the sense that Crellin is really passionate about some of the issues he is talking about – there are times when he grabs his head in raw frustration at some of the stupidity in the world, but at the same time he makes sure there is a sharp and hilarious punchline at the end of every point. There is a thoughtful, sombre note at the end of the show, but by that time the audience was happy to be entrusted into Crellin’s hands and give him the benefit of the doubt that he would take us somewhere interesting- which he most certainly did.
This is a clever, political, and hilarious hour of comedy. Recommended.
For more info and booking details go to Apocalypse Soon