I didn’t really know what to expect from this show, which, I think, is what encapsulates the spirit of the Comedy Festival. See something unfamiliar and different, take a chance, and expand upon your own notions of what comedy can be.
And this show certainly proved to be unlike anything I have seen before. And yet, at moments, it was strikingly familiar, and that is the paradox that made this show so fascinating for me.
Asakichi Katsura appears on stage, dressed in traditional Japanese attire, mounts a large pedestal encased in scarlet velvet and set before a golden velvet background, and he kneels on a blue cushion. Then, having told the audience not to film or photograph the performance, he takes out his own camera and films the audience themselves. These mischievous moments, which are littered throughout the performance, are made stronger by context, and give the audience a sense of the relatable.
The bulk of the performance is delivered as rakugo, which is a narrator based artform, involving a fan and a small towel as props and dating back three hundred years. Asakichi explains rakugo with a series of demonstrations before delving into the material proper. Structurally, much of the spoken material was quite familiar to a Western sensibility and I found myself anticipating the occasional punchline. What is striking about this show, though, is the delivery, which juxtaposes a a formal aura with talk of farting and pissing in a bottle. Don’t get me wrong, its not all piss and fart jokes, indeed, in many ways it is more about attitude than content. Mime and affectation are what sell this performance. This is essentially a re-contextualised “shaggy dog story”.
He also incorporates other traditional Japanese artforms into the performance, such as Japanese flute and a practice, which I didn’t quite catch the name of, which I can best describe as mime, with what looks like one of those cheap bamboo placemats. Weird but cool.
Many shows in festival have press tags which read things like “laugh out loud funny”, “riotous fun” or “comedy gold”. You’re unlikely to see quotes like that attributed to this show. Rather, it is gentler of nature, amusing and interesting. Harsh as this may sound, ultimately I found this show more intriguing than funny.
That said, this is a must see for any serious student of comedy. For the uninitiated, it transcends entertainment, this show is an education.
For full booking detail check the Melbourne Comedy Festival website