Wry Adolescent And A Funny Tour Of Meaning

The Age

Monday April 23, 2007

Helen Razer

COMEDY FESTIVAL REVIEWS: JOSH THOMAS: PLEASE LIKE ME * * * *

Melbourne Town Hall,

until April 29.

Running time: 50 minutes

MATT ELSBURY - MEANING ...? * * *

Pony, Lt Collins Street, city,

until April 28.

Running time: 55 minutes

AS IT turns out, the Comedy Festival's most junior player is also one of its best. Direct from adolescent hell and schoolies' setbacks, this Brisbane lad reports back with all the quaint fury of a chilled Holden Caulfield.

If you're inured to mid-level smut, you'll probably love this gig. Thomas views his hormonal lot with wry detachment. In enumerating his sagging sexual misadventures, he shows the disconnect between manhood as it is understood and manhood as it is experienced. He doesn't hesitate to paint himself a wilting failure teeming, we are told, with an oversupply of oestrogen.

His stories are populated by real, warm people. His eye for bathos and tat is extraordinary. This 19-year-old delivers a fat-free and fiercely funny slice of suburban life.

IF THE notion of Don Watson's Death Sentence turned to immediate comic life is your idea of a good night out, you shouldn't miss Matt Elsbury.

Elsbury is eager to halt the decline of meaning. Words, he insists, have come increasingly to signify nothing, and he does a commendable job of restoring joy to language.

Corporate newspeak is amusing rather than annoying in this performance.

Elsbury gives the audience new bespoke job titles. He traces the etymology and overuse of words like "technician" and generally takes us on a bleak and funny tour of a world drained of truth.

© 2007 The Age

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