Melbourne International Comedy Festival 2009
Randy’s Postcards from Purgatory
5 April 2009
Portland Hotel
Randy’s Postcards from Purgatory
5 April 2009
Portland Hotel
As his recent pairings with Sammy J have proven, if Heath McIvor has his hand it, it’s worth checking out. Sammy and Heath’s close friend Randy may be the greatest heterosexual male couple on stage, but have parted ways to give us Comedy Festival solo shows. Sammy has regressed to1999 and Randy is sending us Postcards from Purgatory.
Randy is more foul-mouthed, drunken, and animated than most stand ups. His tale of dismal love is augmented with treats like the divinely absurd Flashback Yeti, a really creepy kids TV show (done with shadow puppets), and Randy’s own hand puppetry – but it’s still just an A to B to “now I SEE that I just need to take charge of my own life” tale – and – we’ve heard it all before.
The monologues that captivate us are filled with dilemmas and choices and the teller creates enough detail to bring every element of their semi-fictional world to life. It’s hard not to have a bit of a crush on someone as purple and irresistible as Randy, but it’s hard to care about Randy and Polly, when we don’t know much about her. Compared to the complexity of Randy, his vital offstage characters felt too much like...puppets.
Of course it’s easy to get a giggle by calling Keanu Reeves a cunt, but so is just saying “cunt”. To make it more than a lazy joke, we need to know about Keanu‘s cuntish behaviour. Plot jumps like “Before I knew it I was a Private Detective” gave us rip snorting prop gags, but instantly sacrificed the authenticity of the story. We believe in Randy – so we need to believe in his world as well.
Great story isn’t just good plot. The same night I saw Denise Scott make community circus sound fascinating, and Sam Simmons bring Adelaide’s most bogan-filled Westfield to vivid, almost fit-inducing life. Randy’s story is more interesting, but Denise and Sam made their worlds and their unseen characters live. Postcards from Purgatory is perfectly told by Randy, and worth going just for the telling, but the story needs more detail to make it soar.
