Juliette Burton's Look At Me, Adelaide Fringe 2016

Juliette Burton – Look At Me

By Lee Bemrose

Arts festivals anywhere in the world are competitive beasts. It can be tough to get a gig and even tougher to get an audience, let alone rave reviews. To achieve a sold-out season and a chorus of rave reviews at the big daddy of all festivals – The Edinburgh Fringe – you have to be doing something right. One person who has just done all of the above is UK actor, writer and performer Juliette Burton with her latest show Look At Me. Other capitals like Sydney and Melbourne are missing out big time, but heads up Adelaide – Juliette is returning for another appearance at The Adelaide Fringe. If you like world class comedy with a big heart, read on.


So, Juliette, how has life been treating you lately?Life has been treating me like a pet; sometimes it gives me juicy bones, takes me for walks and my little tail is wagging, and other times life leaves me at home scratching on the door howling and making a mess of the cushions. Ups and downs but mainly juicy bones of ups!

How happy were you with how the show was received at the Edinburgh Fringe?Ecstatic! That's an underused word isn't it: "ecstatic"? Great word. Anyway, Look At Me premiered at Edinburgh Fringe 2014, getting 5 star reviews in national press, having sold out shows and at Edinburgh 2015 it had a total sold out run - every ticket that could be sold was. It was incredible. A big juicy bone two years in a row.

What's it like performing at that particular festival compared to others you've appeared at? 
Performing at different festivals is like gathering a collection of friends all from the same family; you have Edinburgh Fringe which is the biggest arts festival in the world and why I even began in this career. It's the BOSS of all festivals, so boss I actually moved to the city because I loved it so much. Edinburgh's my best mate, in a way; that mate who challenges you and helps you realise the best of yourself. Brighton Fringe is like Edinburgh's kid sister; fun, arty, lovely but much smaller. Melbourne International Comedy Festival was like the cool hipster cousin who I loved being around and fancied a little bit. And then there's Adelaide who's the second largest arts festival in the world - the festival who's chilled, laid back and SO much fun! Adelaide just wants to have a good time and I'm ready to be a part of that again!

Have the audiences at the different festivals been noticeably different in any ways?People the world over can be amazing. I think it's one of my favourite things, realising that an audience in one part of the world can be just as fun, vocal and up for it as an audience in a totally different part of the world - similar characters pop up in different corners of a country or the globe. I’ve made good friends in Edinburgh who are so similar to those in York. I’ve made good friends in Adelaide who were so similar to those in London. And friends in Melbourne who remind me of those in Cambridge. We’re all connected, we’re all the same really, if you focus on the similarities and not the differences.

Tell us a little about Look At Me. What's it all about? How did it come about?

I first had the idea back in 2007 – what would happen if I swapped my body for other bodies, having been the same girl in so many different bodies naturally. I’ve been a size 4 (US size 0) due to anorexia, a size 20 (US size 16) due to compulsive overeating disorder, I’ve been a “healthy” size but ill with bulimia and I’ve been a “normal” size and struggled with hidden illnesses like depression and anxiety. It got me thinking – is what we appear to be who we really are? I started chatting with friends about the idea and everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, I spoke to had a story about how they relate to their bodies and the outside world. And judgement too. So when the Arts Council in the UK gave me some money to change my looks in lots of dramatic ways I leapt at the chance to become, for a day, a 90 year old lady, a man, I wore the hijab, dressed “provocatively” and revisited my obese self – to find out how much appearances affect who we are on the inside. 
  
What were those experiences like? Any surprises there? 
A LOT of surprises! I don’t want to give away any spoilers but being a man unleashed some hidden sides of myself! Let’s just say perhaps confidence verged into arrogance… Revisiting my obese body surprised quite a few of my friends in fact…one of my friends didn’t even recognise me and other friends who have seen the show fancied me MORE in that disguise… And I wanted to reclaim my experience of that body on that day. And being a 90 year old lady revealed some truths; I felt rather liberated in some ways! To see just how liberated you will need to join me at the show!

The subject matter is, when you get down to it, pretty serious stuff. How difficult was it to work it into comedy?
 Not terribly difficult. Some of the experiences I went through were so bizarre that the only way to communicate them to audiences is with honesty and laughter. Looks will change all the time and youth will fade, it’s life’s great joke that we assign any real “value” in our appearances and yet we do and we’re encouraged to do so. Reflecting that judgement call through the show reveals the comedy in ourselves and also in the absurdity of my own experiences. We all have a day when someone judges us on appearance and the best we can do is laugh about it.

Some of the people you interview are dealing with some serious issues... how did they react when they found out your show was a comedy?
For the show I didn’t want it to be just my voice, so I interviewed a lot of people, which I do for all my shows, to make sure the questions I’m asking are universal as well as personal. For Look At Me I interviewed 80 year old men and women, physically disabled friends, thalidomide men, facially disfigured dudes, professional models, fellow weirdo performers, transgender people about how they relate to their bodies and how others relate to them.

When I told these people I was interviewing my show was a comedy, I told them well before I interviewed them, and they all unanimously loved the idea! I think we’ve all thought how ridiculous it is to judge on appearances; and as one of my interviewees said “Other people’s ignorance is not and never will be my problem. And if other people think that because of the way I look I can’t do certain things, well, watch me!”

Watch us! We are so much more than others and even we ourselves might think we are.
 
We know how the critics and audiences have responded to the show; what have been the responses of the interviewees? 
The interviewees have their own mailing list who I email first to let them know of future shows. I believe almost every interviewee featured in the show has now seen the show…bar one. And that one lives in Australia. So I hope they can come along!

All the interviewees who have seen it have loved it; it’s their show as well as mine in many ways. It’s everyone’s show who sees it and takes something from it. An audience affects a show far more than we realise. 

What are a couple of highlights for you in the interviews?
 Other than the incredible Adam Pearson, who I met thanks to the interviews for this show and I now count as one of my best friends… we once got so drunk that he ate a whole sharing sundae by himself. And we’ve shared some pretty dirty Cards Against Humanity games… other than him, there’s Geoff Adams-Spink who I met during my time working at the BBC, a wise, funny, irreverent man affected by the thalidomide drug. And there's Simon Minty who runs Abnormally Funny People. He says his condition (he’s 3 ft 11) is one thing but his disability is how people react to him. There’s also John Lyons, an 80-something year old poet, artist and author who says he thinks about life, not age – with ALL my interviewees I watch their interviews with the audience in the show and every single time I’m struck by the collective wisdom of my friends! It’s a treat to watch these pearls of wisdom back to remind me to listen to them and adopt their experience myself!  

Don't tell anyone this, but when I saw your wonderful show When I Grow Up at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in 2014, I almost cried. It was heart-breaking to see what you had gone through, but ultimately one of the most uplifting (and funny) shows I had ever seen. How do your shows affect you during the performances? 
Wow. Thank you. That’s a wonderful thing to share and say aloud. Well, not aloud. This is written text. But you know, I heard it in my head so we’re totally connected like that. Anyway, what was the question? How do the shows affect me during the performance. Honestly, every single performance I get emotionally vulnerable and raw. But I count that as a victory because if I get to a point where I can be so honest and vulnerable with an audience then we must be really connecting, not as performer to audience but as human to human. I’m often asked how I perform if I’m struggling with my mental health problems and I always say because I know that as awful as I might feel before the show, I will feel amazing on the other side, because I’ve connected with a whole room of people who are with me on that journey… we’re in it together. 

 
How do you feel about humanity generally? Are we getting any better at being human or are we still a bit shit?
What a question! I don’t pretend to know the answer to that. I have to, for sanity’s sake, believe in the good in humanity. For every awful act that happens or hits us personally or hits the headlines there are so many people out there who will choose the path of kindness. There have been some shitty things happen in the world in the past couple of years since I last came to Australia and each time I have an increasingly greyer view of the world… and then a greater, stronger, brighter revision of that – when I see the power of loveliness rush through in the wake of shittiness.

A news story I was involved in in May 2015 is one of those weird news stories, It affected many and affected me personally. I relapsed badly because of it. But then the rush of humanity overwhelmed me. And it was immense. I talk about it in the show; we’re never really alone. It just takes bravery to be honest about how we’re really doing. Once I got on stage and started making jokes about the situation, hearing people laugh about what I’d been through I immediately knew it was going to be ok.
 
You are coming all the way to Australia but not taking the show to Melbourne or Sydney. This is a bummer for Melbourne and Sydney – any chance this could change?
 I would LOVE to return to Melbourne one day and visit Sydney for the first time… Let’s all keep our fingers crossed, and perhaps if this Adelaide fringe goes well I can venture a bit further in the future!

3:10 To Humour, Rich Hall Review April 2015

Rich Hall – 3:10 To Humour

Reviewed by Lee Bemrose



I don't know about the title of this show – I really don't – but it feels like some numpty somewhere involved in making a world class comedy festival insisted that Rich Hall give his show a name, when in fact the show could have just as easily have been called “Rich Hall”. And I can kind of hear Rich saying something like, “Oh for fuck sake you Goddamn marketing numpty – why does my show need a name? Why do I need some stupid label? Tins of baked beans need labels – am I a tin of Goddamned motherfucking baked beans? Okay. Okay. How about... I dunno – 3:10 To Humour? That okay with you, you piece of shit marketing numpty?” Sure, it could be a pun on some obscure 1950s short story set in the wild west, but even so its relevance to the show's content eludes me.

Rich Hall is one of those comedy acts that really doesn't need to be labelled. He's Rich Hall, and that's that. And he's just about the funniest guy you're likely to see on stage so basically just buy a ticket and know that you will laugh your arse off. I'm a reviewer and I'm going to spend some of my own cash to see the show again, and I think that's a bigger endorsement than any shitty little five star deal.

Rich gives himself an off-stage introduction, then wanders on-stage looking like he just woke up 10 minutes ago and really couldn't care less. He tells us he is glad to be back in Melbourne and gets on with some of his observations of the differences between Australians and Americans. In politics, it seems, the concept of a coalition is head-bending to Americans. And maybe he has a point – just look at the coalition of shoe repairers and key cutters. I for one had never considered how odd this coupling was, but now that this outsider had pointed it out, why shoe repairs and key-cutting?

For some reason – something to do with the various Bush politicians being exactly the same - the comedian needed to do an impressively awful impersonation of one of the impressively awful Baldwin brothers which lead to Hall wandering slouch-shouldered off stage and into the audience to heckle himself. Back up on stage he did another of the Baldwin brothers (pretty much the same as the first), to come back down into the audience to harangue himself with even harsher abuse. This turned into him being an imaginary audience member heckling the heckler... you've got to love a valid point wrapped up in warped silliness.

And he is very good at verbal abuse, too. His banter with audience members frequently involves comically vehement insults which he totally dead-pans to hilarious effect. On this night he did an admirable job of not turning his ability to insult on a couple of particularly annoying “hecklers”. (I rabbit-ear the word hecklers because it was the lamest version of heckling ever. Drunk idiots incapable of stringing a sentence together, they shouted idiotic monosyllabic grunts far too frequently throughout the show). Where most of the audience were on the verge of telling these incoherent retards incapable of handling their booze to STFU, Hall engaged somewhat and even made one the star of an improv song, showing that this gruff, thunderous looking personification of a hangover has a degree of finesse about him.

The music is a lot of fun. He talks with someone in the audience and builds an improv song out of the snippets of their life he has extracted from them. It's clever and funny when it works, and just plain funny when he struggles to make it work.

The highlight of the show for me was his ode to Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan Is Getting Back Together. I hadn't heard it or heard of it before and as a result it was kind of... astonishing. I won't spoil it here by describing it, but it is one of the funniest things I've seen. The build up to it is perfect and... I really want to describe it here but will resist.

The bit when the harmonica blares out klaxon-like... no. I really must resist. Just go see it. This piece is almost the sole reason for me going back for more.

But outside of the songs, he has more stories and they are just priceless. As well as the observational stuff (politics, marriage, America's idiotic love affair with guns... lots of stuff with a message as well as just being funny), he has been the guest on many, many television shows and has a vast store of anecdotes to draw upon. His experience with the little guy on car show Top Gear is brilliant.

In short, I think a certain reviewer has a bit of a man crush on a certain dishevelled comedian and he is looking forward to their next date.

Norman Gunston Interview With Sally Struthers... Inspirational.

As a serious student of the celebrity interview, this has always been my favourite. Just saw it again on a comedy doco after a million years, and I still love it so much that tears got in my eyes. I fucking love this.

Death Rides A Horse, Melbourne Fringe Festival 2013 Review

Death Rides A Horse - Rama Nicholas

Reviewed by Lee Bemrose

The title is taken from the 1967 Spaghetti Western by Sergio Leone and starring Lee Van Cleef, and while the feel of this one woman performance is loyal to that genre of film-making (just as cheesy but funnier), the story is only tenuously connected to the movie, if at all.

Writer and performer Rama Nicholas plays more than a dozen characters including Clixter the horse narrator, Catarina the heroine, flamenco hero and love interest Gus (I think this was his name... my note-taking-in-the-dark sucks), a villainous sheriff, a brothel madam and her entire whorehouse. There are many other minor characters too who get big laughs and are all, in their small way, a nod to the Spaghetti Western.

I have to admit that initially the cheesiness had me worried. It felt a little too flaky, like it was going to be an amateur performance that wasn't going to fly.

How wrong I was.

Less than 10 minutes into the show the audience is seduced by Nicholas' charm and gusto. Or perhaps it is the charm and gusto of the characters she plays. Catarina was orphaned at a young age and left on the doorstep of the whorehouse. The madam takes her in raises her, believing her to be destined for bigger things than whoredom. Indeed, Catarina wants to be the best darned cowgirl in the whole wide world, and when she is robbed of some racing prize money she teams up with the dancing Spaniard and they set off to Cancun on the Day Of The Dead (Death's day off) to put things right. She wants revenge on the sheriff, who killed her parents, and the Spaniard wants to kill Death for taking his young bride back in Barcelona.

It's pretty well a non-stop giggle fest of silliness and it's difficult to pick highlights. There are the girls in the whorehouse who sing of having dreams that never come true; the cross-country journey played out as a montage; our heroes' mishap with peyote; the dramatic shoot out; Death played as a music-hall song and dance man... it's all inventive, silly and played with obvious enjoyment.

And as playful as it all is, some of the songs and indeed the dialogue are a bit on the raunchy side. We are talking wild west whorehouse here and the play doesn't shy away from the nuts and bolts of how the girls make their living. The villainous sheriff even drops the C-bomb to hilarious effect (“Aw come on, I can say that - this is a fringe show!”). You'd have to be the prudiest prude to take offence.

Very funny stuff. Highly recommended.

At The Lithuanian Club, North Melbourne until September 27.

Pajama Men Review

These guys are reeeeeeally funny. Check out my review of them at Australian Stage.

Jim Jeffries Review, Sydney Comedy Store

I wasn't sure if the mag was going to run my review of Jim Jeffries. I thought they'd at least asterisk a few words out because it's a bit, ahem, fruity. Bit sweary. Bit potty-mouthed. But totally in keeping with the show. Gawd bless 'em though, they're a bit rock 'n roll after all.

Anyway, click on the image to make big and read... but not if swear words make you cry.

Funny show and I'd write more about it here but this week's starting to freak out on me a little. I'm due in at work at 6am tomorrow morning and my very long chat with Warren Ellis has to be made into a 650 word story by Thursday and there's another one due on the same day

Sam Simmons Staring Competition

I had to interview Sam Simmons today. Below is the proposal I sent to Drum, all along knowing that there would probably be a problem. Read what could have been...

SIMMONS SAID

SAM SIMMONS MAY OR MAY NOT BE APPEARING AT A COMEDY GALA FESTIVAL AT THE COMEDY STORE. AFTER A BRIEF AND SLIGHTLY SURREAL PHONE CONVERSATION IN WHICH THE STAND UP COMEDIAN DID A WEE, SANG HIS FAVOURITE BICUIT JINGLES FROM THE 80S AND REMINISCED ABOUT BEING GAFFER TAPED UNDER A STAIR CASE AND BEING SPOONED BY WIL ANDERSON, LEE BEMROSE FOUND HIMSELF LOCKED IN A STARING COMPETITION WITH THE DAVID HELFGOTT OF COMEDY...

















“I win. You blinked.”
“No you did.”



WHAT: The Comedy Store Gala Special featuring Sam Simmons, Wil Anderson, The Axis Of Awesome and more.
WHEN & WHERE: Tuesday & Saturday until 20 December at The Comedy Store, Moore Park Entertainment Quarter.

Kitty Flanagan Review

Just saw Kitty Flanagan. God. So funny. So gorgeous. Just banged out a late night review of the show for Drum Media. The review went along the lines of oh my God she's so funny and gorgeous and I'm a dribbling idiot. The review is more about the night overall rather than her performance. Mostly her material was exactly the same as her show from about a year or so ago and the lack of atmosphere really made an impression.

But she is a very very funny human being.


KITTY FLANAGAN

The Gaelic Club is a weird venue. Something about the layout. Great times have been had there but I always suspect that this is because the party is better than the venue. Same thing happened on Tuesday night – early on the vibe felt soulless and empty, like a pub trivia night. Thank God the comedy was good.

A couple of suggestions: maybe try putting in some tables for punters to sit at and feel comfortable with getting up and down to get drinks. That school assembly arrangement was awful and it prevented people spending at the bar. Also, get rid of the muddy sounding chill music and retro rock for the overly long waiting time for the comedy to start. It felt like a wake.

The MC for the evening was Matt Dyktynski. He was relaxed and funny and had some good banter with the school assembly. He was good with accents and served up some genuinely funny moments.

First comedian up was a guy called Oliver (sorry – can’t read my scrawled version of his second name). He was Asian and played the Asian schtick and seemed pretty nervous. There were a few jokes at reality TV’s expense but my scribbles end his section with ‘pretty bad.’

Jason Chong didn’t look very Asian to me but check his last name. And he played up to the Asian thing too but in more confident style. He was very relaxed and at times very funny. He did a funny section with an Optimus Prime voice-changing helmet. Very silly and I want one of those helmets.

Then Kitty Flanagan came on and fuck me if I didn’t stop taking notes. Damnit. I got distracted by how funny she was. It wasn’t new material, but God it made the school assembly laugh. Seriously, we laughed till a little bit of wee came out.

The Gaelic Club has some good comedy acts coming up and they’re worth going to. The club just needs to work on the ambiance.

Comedy at The Gaelic Club happens on the last Tuesday of every month.

LEE BEMROSE

Lawrence Leung Learns To Breakdance Review

I didn't have to review the performance last night, but my cold, walnut-sized brain couldn't help itself. I feel this is a better review than the one of Brilliant Monkey.

I'm interested in this thing about the contract between performer (or writer) and audience because in the post below, which is a monthly column I write for a magazine, I'm probably going to switch from what basically happened to 'imagine if this happened'. I think some things are funnier when you know it actually happened... unless from the start you've established that it's all fiction.

I dunno. It's like you establish what we both expect out of this thing (slap-stick, fantasy, hard-boiled etc), and as a reader or audience member you shift your mind-set accordingly.

Read the review and let me know what you think. Or not. I don't care.

(The Japanese reference is kind of a joke from the show and I would love to tell you what the T shirt bit was all about because I fucking howled with laughter, but I don't want to spoil LL's joke. If he was selling those T shirts after the show I would totally have bought one).



LAWRENCE LEUNG LEARNS TO BREAKDANCE

Lawrence Leung tries to learn to break dance because it’s the only way he feels he can out-cool his brother. This is warm comedy, nice, human, touchy feely stuff which had moments of real hilarity. In fact it was so warm and nice and occasionally so funny that I feel like a bit of a shit saying that although it was good, I’ve seen way better.

The contract here between performer and audience is that this is all real: Lawrence Leung really does embark on a mission to be cool. His brother has it all over Lawrence in the areas of fashion, ladies and ‘tude, so Lawrence decides he will out-cool his bass guitar-playing brother in dance.

Look, it’s funny, this goofy “documentary” style comedy. In concept and execution, the fashion segment was really funny. The *Japanese characters on the designer T shirt piece was laugh out loud funny. Seriously good stuff.

But why did he bother looking astonished at the Rubic’s cube set-up? Do the piece but please don’t pretend that this is all some freaky coincidence because it totally breaks the contract between performer and audience. Leung himself has described his act as documentary comedy... there is no place for faking stuff in documentary.

An audience will suspend disbelief if that’s the deal... fuck it – you can take us to the moon on a giant banana if we know it’s fantasy, but when we see a performer lie and pretend something fake is real it just undermines the rest of the show. What else in this “documentary” comedy was fiction? If it’s fiction, be up-front about it. We’ll be as cool as Dennis with that.

Audiences everywhere have been loving this show, so maybe I’m just a being weird about this contract thing. Lawrence Leung Learns To Breakdance, for me, was uneven but had a good heart. And yes, quite a few funny bits.

*I being racist.

Season over.

LEE BEMROSE

Scratch Improv For Cracker

No theatre reviews this week, just a couple of stories covering a couple of acts for Sydney's Cracker Comedy Festival. There is rather a lot of comedy on offer at the moment.