The Aspie Hour
28 March 2018
The Butterfly Club
to 5 April
comedyfestival.com.au
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| The Aspie Hour. Sophie Smyth and Ryan Smedley |
Sophie Smyth and Ryan Smedley are recent graduates from Federation University's Arts Academy. They became friends because they are obsessed with music theatre .
Obsessed.
I dare you to tell Ryan that the 1981 version Merrily We Roll Along wasn't a hit* or find an inconsistency with Sophie's replica Dorothy costume.
I lost count of the musical references in their hour-long show. I even lost count of the Sondheim references. They put the likes of me to utter shame. I'm a mere Sondheim fan in comparison.
They are so obsessed that they've created a musical cabaret about being obsessed, going to New York (each by themself) to indulge in said-obsession (and to snog a stranger), and how being obsessed is kinda great. Ryan sings his stories, Sophie structures a musical around hers – with interval. Her "how to lose a guy" song is the one to beat for my favourite song of the festival.
Both also have Asperger's Syndrome and The Aspie Hour is also about seeing the neurotypical world though different eyes. And how to feel the world though the complex non-verbal emotional communication of people like Sondheim.
It's an absolute delight that shows how telling your story in the way you want to tell it is always the way to an audience's heart.
You don't even have to know who Sondheim is to love it.
*It wasn't.
