Poet Laureate Telia Nevile is a poet and world traveller who in her debut comedy festival show, While I’m Away revealed so much about herself in this fascinating journey through the world and the soul.
Dressed in the manner of a well heeled backpacker, Telia awaited our arrival at the entrance of the intimate venue, greeting all with some reserve, setting up the character and mood immediately. Armed with projector full of antique travel slides, Telia took us through the many stages of a world tour. At various stops, she recited brilliant poems of unrequited love and heartbreak that both tugged at the heartstrings and the funny bone. While on the surface they were the poetry of an isolated young girl who had poured her anguish out onto the page, plenty of witty travel metaphors and slightly creepy yet hilariously descriptive prose were used to keep with the theme and provide plenty of laughs.
Without the travel theme of the show, Telia’s poetry would come across as much more needy and unhinged, as demonstrated by other comic poets, which would possibly making the character annoyingly amusing. But instead these pieces were given a grand sense of adventure and delivered in such a strong voice with small glimpses of a damaged soul beneath the surface. Her between poem spiels had the charming awkward clunkiness of a school project presentation which was a brilliant contrast to the confident and intense reciting of the poems themselves. This was an endearing character, one much more at ease reading than interacting one on one with people, to which the audience immediately warmed to.
She made use of some simple yet effective props that highlighted the particular poem and created some stunning atmosphere. The projector itself was also used as a humour device with it’s temperamental qualities used for some comedic pauses. There was also some non threatening audience participation during her poem “Safari”, with everyone happy to join in the cacophony with everyone else.
After thirty minutes or so, our journey with Telia was sadly over. This was the perfect length for this kind of material as there was only so far you could push the angst and adventure angle. Telia had a delightfully eloquent method of departing the stage instead of the usual ‘tell your friends’ spiel everyone else uses. This was a delightful show that would charm and amuse the hopeless romantic in everyone.
For booking details visit the Comedy Festival website