Comedy Festival

New Zealand’s Comedy Festival took place between 2^nd and 26^th May. We took a look through the programme and made a selection of five shows – all people we’d not seen before:

The Fan Brigade

A Friday night gig at the San Fran – usually a music venue, but set up this time for comedy. They have some strange narrow tables there which you sit at perpendicular to the stage. They’re wide enough for drinks, but not for eating. Fortunately, we’d booked ourselves into Heaven afterwards, so weren’t tempted by the food options, which aren’t great. The beer is good, though. The Fan Brigade are two Kiwi women who sing songs about life, particularly New Zealand life, and their take on it. They are frequently rude; in their songs, to each other, and to the audience. And very, very funny. Here’s a taster: 

Afterwards we went to Heaven for pizza.

The following week, we took in two shows in one night. With only half an hour between shows, we decided to have an early dinner at Capitol, it being near to our first venue, BATS Theatre.

Kura Forrester

Kura Forrester is perhaps better known as an actress, from What We Do In The Shadows, The Breaker Upperers, and various New Zealand TV series. Her show, Kura Woulda Shoulda, draws on her family life, and introduces various characters as aunts and uncles, all of whom we have to keep up with. She also gives a lot of detail about her sex life, and in particular, finishes with a story about then-unknown, now rugby multi-code megastar, Sonny Bill Williams. This show eventually won the Billy T award this year.

David Correos

A short walk up the road took us to the Fringe Bar, one of the full-time comedy and cabaret clubs in Wellington. This looked like another sell-out night (we went on Cheap Wednesday), and we were near the front. Not too near, as we have had instances where, upon seeing an act that we were unfamiliar with, we were invited to become part of the show. David Correos is a Filipino comedian, and specialises a lot in gross-out comedy. Fortunately for us, most of his show was merely describing his previous comedic shows and experiences. These sounded bad enough being related to us, so what they were like when he actually performed them beggars belief. He finished on a high with a tale about boats with no toilet facilities, relieving oneself whilst swimming in the sea – I mean, hey, who’s going to notice? – and the effects of currents in water. Oh, did he mention his parents were on board? His parents were on board.

Alice Snedden

The following week, on cheap Wednesday, we headed back to the Fringe Bar to see Alice Snedden. Alice has been writing, and appearing on, New Zealand TV shows for the last couple of years, with such shows as Jono And Ben and Funny Girls, and now has a show called Absolute Monster. She is, I think, a standard comedian. Yes, she has funny stories and tells them well, but she doesn’t seem to have a hook on which to hang it, anything unique. Still, an enjoyable night.  Afterwards we crossed the road to Fratelli, an Italian which we have so far managed to avoid in all our trips out. They do standard Italian grub, pretty well but nothing unusual. So it complemented the comedy quite well.

So You think You Khandallah?

The next night out was our final pick for this year’s festival. So You Think You Khandallah? Is an ensemble piece by Kickin’ Rad, performed at BATS Theatre. It’s set in the Khandallah Academy of Performing Arts in the Eighties, and comes with a warning: may contain legwarmers.

So what’s the title all about? Khandallah, for my international readers, is a suburb of Wellington. Previous years’ productions have included Mirror Miramar and Deep Space Naenae. The premise is an improvised soap opera, set in an acting and dancing school. It is played over five nights, and I’m sure there are some aficionados who go every night to find out how it works out. We weren’t that committed, and only went for one night. There is a sort of compère who announces the plot changes, scenes, and generally moves the action on. One of the actors decided to play the entire evening as a horse, which led to some interesting situations (lots of “what’s that, Skippy? Timmy’s fallen down a well?” – type dialogue needed to convey her thoughts). It was all very silly and enjoyable, but we had no real need to go and find out how it all ended.

Afterwards we went for dinner at a new(-ish) place that’s opened up around the corner, Brown Brothers. This is an Indian fusion restaurant featuring a chef who worked under Chetan Pangam of 180°Restaurant. It wasn’t bad, but I felt that they could have been bolder with the spices.

So that’s our comedy festival adventure for this year.