Chris Brain won the Billy T award last year for his no doubt compelling show about recovering from drug addiction and depression. Unfortunately he’s had a relapse of the depression and is a bit fragile and on the camomile tea. The title of the show The One Forty refers to the number of characters allowed on Twitter. Though Chris never explained that, I think he assumed the audience would be more twitter savvy than they turned out to be. Most of the audience admitted to being on Facebook, but only 2 were on twitter. It was only a few months ago that Twitter was pretty alien to me and I felt a quick comedic class in Twitter 101 might’ve been fun. But then, maybe this concept was just an excuse to hang material from? Well there is often a sense that that might be going on, but he is definitely passionate about the subject..
Chris says he has spent the year becoming addicted to Twitter, which is not so surprising when you have an isolating illness like depression. One of the nicer aspects for him was when his follower mates noted if his tweets became dark, they would come over and take him out for a drive which shows how Twitter can provide a sense of connection and community. For a comedian there is also the ability to receive gratification from someone retweeting your quip. Chris says tweets are a bit like diary entries, and that he has gone over his tweets for the past year and he has noticed the main subjects of his tweets are his TV watching habits and most of all venting his anger. It would have been nice to see some of his old tweets up on the screen behind him and he could have got some humour out of them. Instead we got quite a bit of material on his TV watching habits and what makes him angry.
The screen behind Chris was used to show twitter live which seemed like a pretty exciting idea and he had the story of the night of his show where the results of Master Chef were tweeted and upset audience members who were recording it at home. He did answer one tweet ‘How’s your audience tonight?’, with ‘Small, wish you were here’. Was it set up? Possibly but I don’t think so, but I felt he could have had someone (the theatre tech, his wife?)send him some interesting tweets each night to add to the show which would have been fun.
Chris had some lovely silly ideas and there was the edgy chance (he warned us) that he may go into a panic attack at any moment, but the show felt a little like the 2nd album syndrome after his big hit last year. That he’s perhaps rushed to put this one together so that it’s a bit shaky & rough around the edges – not unlike the man himself. Chris also had to deal with a cold, quiet Tuesday night audience on his opening night. My favorite part of the show was when he got revved up a bit and did some material about the attempted terrorist bombing in New York that had just happened. A little fire lit up behind the twinkle in his eyes and I could see the Billy T winner shining through. I’m hoping more of that emerges as his run continues and he settles in.
Visit the NZ Comedy Festival website for booking details.