Mach / Lap - Date Raptor : Melbourne International Comedy Festival 2011

Mach / Lap

By Lisa Dib

Fabian Lapham and Michael Wannenmacher are, together, Mach / Lap. Hopefully it didn't take you as long to work out how the name came out as it did for me. Sometimes my inability to get a joke amazes me.

Anyway. Michael and Fabian are chatting to me quite kindly about their current Comedy Festival show, Date Raptor, the image of which would be perfect to turn into an internet meme. Make it happen, people.

The lads talk a bit about their loveable character, portrayed by Michael in the show to a hilarious degree.

Michael: That’s me in the suit... and that’s my skin on a bad day. That’s my suit I got in Vietnam...

Fabian: And that’s my head that I got in the Cretaceous period. Doesn’t look a day over Jurassic.

The guys bounce off each other incredibly well; like other well-heeled comedy duos before them, they gel like Guido hair and banter back and forth with the best of them.

Aussie sketch comedy has been dying a slow and painful death over the years, but Mach / Lap are a definite case for its happy revival. Michael and Fabian tell me a bit about the show.

Fabian: There’s conventional stand-up in there, and some songs, a lot of character-based sketches...
 
Michael: I hesitate to use the world “old school”, but we use traditional-style sketches... anarchic sketch comedy with a variety of sketch and stand-up included.

Fab: ... but with new themes. We’re trying to do stuff that hasn’t really been done before without being too…wanky (laughs)

What kind of bizarre characters do you have to introduce us to?

Michael: Fabs does Gary the depressive who speaks at his father’s funeral and does a talking tram tour through Bendigo. Then Brian Skankey who’s a talkback listener...

Fabian: We’ve got Judas and Jesus; Judas rocking up early for the last supper and sharing an awkward moment with Jesus. That’s one of our favourite sketches.

Michael: With this sketch show we’ve kept it very minimal; often you see sketch shows that have lots of costumes and props and whatnot.

Fabian: It’s a lot less stress to be in a show without a lot of costume changes and props; you can just roll with the performance.

The duo, that officially formed last October, are a product of both comedic and filmic influence; Michael from Before Dawn films and Fabian from B.E.C.A.W.D- together, they are... Mach / Lap! Applause! But did they come to be?

Michael: I went to the States and saw Second City and the Improvatorium…I was really inspired by their sketches and the way they did things and we were talking about it and impro-ing a lot to build the sketches.

Fabian: About the same time, I was reading a lot of monologues and reading my old film notes that I could never afford to film, so I thought, ‘What can I adapt to stage?’.

The subject of bad gigs - or, to use comedic terms I have heard, "dying in the arse on stage" - comes up. Michael and Fabian sure have met some interesting characters in their time...

Michael: We played a gig in Bendigo, in a basement bar. You know that scene in The Blues Brothers where they go, “…chicken wire?”… It was like that. The DJ was set up behind us and there was one woman heckler who would not die: (Crotchet  old lady voice) "Your mum loves you".

Fabian: “You’ve gotta understand that yer mum loves you, and you gotta love yer mum”. You can’t stay anything to that.

Michael: We’ve got a song where Fabs is talking about his tragic love life and I’m paying him out and this woman is going: “Oh, leave him alone!” and starts hitting me! “Stop that, he’s lovely!”.

Fabian: She would have killed The Three Stooges. 

Mach/Lap - Date Raptor : BUY TICKETS