It’s been said that the Devil has the best music. In a similar vein, John Robertson was out to demonstrate that it also has the best comedy with his show A Nifty History of Evil. Over the course of an hour, John presented a lecture of sorts on evil events and figures throughout human history as well as its affect of popular culture.
Since evil comes all guises the breadth of John’s material was wide. He explored topics such as evil elements in the bible, horror movies, various dictators, the Marquis de Sade (using a wonderfully silly puppet play) and even went niche with some material on Philippine vampires, clearly a topical byproduct of his years working the convention circuit. All were covered with great degree of detail that informed and entertained but not to the detriment of the jokes of which there were many. His clever quips had the crowd roaring with laughter.
The material was quite dense and the pace was rapid so it was quite exhausting to keep up. There was barely a pause between sentences with John plowing on into his next bit as the audience were responding to the last. I did notice that he often did away with segues, an intriguing technique of verbal efficiently that didn’t detract from the flow of the performance at all as the show presented in such a logical manner that the audience could easily follow.
Being from interstate he took great pains to show off his research on Melbourne by including a couple of obvious references, both celebrated with comically excessive self-congratulation which was a nice touch. The inclusion of ukelele accompaniment to a twisted fairytale was a nice, although unnecessary, touch and the brief puppet show didn’t show off his much touted puppetry skills as much as I would have hoped.
With his bleached blonde spikey hair, black clothing and corset, John presented himself as one of the very despots he covered during the show. He had a wicked smart arse aspect to his stage persona which was completely relevant in this context, this was a man you’d believe lived and breathed evil as well as talk about it. In fact he attempted to incite the crowd to rise up and be his devoted followers on more than one occasion, of which there were a number of takers in the excitable crowd. His extensive stand up experience ensured that he had the punters eating out of his hands.
A Nifty History of Evil was a brilliant debut Comedy Festival show for John. If your interest is piqued by the topic and want a solid hour of stand up you will have a ball.
For booking details visit the Comedy Festival website