Comedy Reviews : Madeleine Tucker, Zack Adams, Anyone for Tennis?

By Lisa Dib

Madeleine Tucker’s Unfashionable Windcheater Factory

Madeleine Tucker

Zack Adams

Anyone for Tennis?

With a cast that includes a happy-go-lucky goblin, a fridge with manifold cooling progeny, a zucchini in love with Mike Whitney that desperately wants to become a cucumber and a dragon Ear Photographer, you know you’re going to have learn to love silliness.

Madeleine Tucker and Co. have created a play that bounces between and silly and the surreal; Rodney- played by Tucker- befriends the aforementioned fridge and zucchini and together they plan to steal a rival ear photographer’s gold.

Along with this is a optometrist’s discus game, cucumber surgery, Toy Dinosaur Paralympics, the ear photography theme song and a sleazy couch. It all sounds rather, well, silly from the outset…and it is. But such is the beauty of it.

One note that many comedy reviewers make of shows is this: they begrudge anyone that takes something that the comic might find funny ‘with their mates’ and puts in on a stage.

Sometimes this is true, namely with bad comedians where everything is bad anyway, but often it goes quite right: Tucker and friends put a lot of home-spun effort into their props (the Toy Dinosaur Paralympics scene, especially, is a feat of modern arts and crafts) and make their humour light-hearted and fanciful enough to perk you up any time.

Such is the nature of powerhouse projects like fellow dress-up bizarros The Mighty Boosh; aspects like “plot” and “logic” can be happily waved away when you have a talking fridge (brilliant costumes, by the by!) and a man with a cheese grater hand that digs lemons.

Zack Adams - Love Songs for Future Girl

Though the musical comedy well is being drained well beyond its capacity, there are some that are doing it quite right. Zack Adams is one of those heading in the precise direction.

More than just a dude with a guitar telling jokes, Adams can forge his comedic bent within whimsical songs; both original and appropriated (his cover of a particular Billy Ray Cyrus hit is notably enjoyable).

Adams rattles off a list of girls that he missed out on, dedicating songs to their romantic memory and wonder what could have been. His stand-up is also as likeable and charming as his songwriting ability, so you’ll probably wanna date him too!

Some sideline stories of kiddies saying the darndest things and fruit-based rap seem out of place and thus, though amusing, fall by the wayside in retrospect; but Adams wraps the whole story in droll sincerity and huggable cordiality.

Anyone for Tennis? – Prepare to be Tuned

Maybe it was the disruptive half of the audience that was made entirely of what I can only assume was a middle school excursion (to comedy in Trades Hall at 10pm? Outrageous!) or maybe it was my burnt-out funny-bone from manifold other shows, but Anyone For Tennis? didn’t hit me where I live tonight.

It seems audacious to make some broad comment about musical comedy and both Jase and Doody (the lads that make up the AFT band) are genuinely good musicians so I can’t begrudge them that, but the show felt…flimsy.

Curious segments like “Is it Doody or Is It Jase?” wherein one of the lads (but which???) dances centre stage in an animal costume and Jase’s ‘homeless woman’ joke (not as bad-taste as it sounds) are more enjoyable than the songs for which they are most well-known.

The show is heavily rehearsed, of course, but Jase, especially, seems uncomfortable with diverting from the plan, as if any digression into non-scripted material or ad-libbing would certainly mean comedy death. But they are funny enough to do this, never you mind.

Anyway, the show is a compilation of songs about girls and love, mostly, saving one about a time machine in their share-house and another- Dandelion Seed- about getting what you wish for.

Their song about menstruation made me a dash discomforted but their numbers about cloning an ex-girlfriend and “Drunken Personality Disorder” make the show happily bizarre.

I just can’t put my finger on what keeps AFT on the outskirts of my humour; am I musical-comedy-ed out? Are they a little too Tripod, not enough Flight of the Conchords? Are they too ‘safe’? I don’t know. I do so loathe to give such a lazy review like “funny, but not hilarious”, but when I pinpoint my major malfunction, I’ll let you know.