Gordon Southern’s ambitious show tries, with truth and lies, to take all of history ever and make it funny.
A Brief History of History is best enjoyed when you leave any hankering for detailed accuracy at home. With 60 minutes to cover all of history with a bonus nod to pre-history AND jokes, Gordon Southern is a man with no time to waste.
After a friendly audience meet and greet, laying the foundation for some recurring themes, our rollercoaster ride through time began. Using PowerPoint slides, musical stings, scripted skits including audience members and plenty of gold stars awarded for shouted answers to quiz questions, Southern kept the show well-mixed and frenetically-paced. Moving from dinosaurs, through an interpretive dance performance of human evolution, to a globe-trotting tour of the various ages of human civilisations, the show lived up to its title. Punctuated by “That’s a fun fact” and “That might not be a fact” fragments of musical ditty, quirky snippets were presented to differing levels of detail.
Southern proved himself to be a performer of many parts, able to neatly switch from History Channel presenter parody to MC Briefly, rapper with keen interest in history and a penchant for keeping his rhymes short, to enthusiastic quiz night host to random association stand up comic – “Pythagoras’ Doritos” was a classic call-back motif. He happily declared that he had to cut corners and skip bits to fit into the available time slot, but the range and occasional depth of exploration of material pretty much met his ambitious intention. Acknowledging his dodgy accent work and cultural bias, Southern managed to shoehorn into the show major international developments, such as European colonialism, the rise of Islam and attitudes to slavery across cultures and eras, as well as President Sarkozy’s shoe selection, typeface references and revolutions in luggage design. His ploy to make the 20th Century a suitably cheerful story for a comedy show was inspired, and his chortle-worthy but touching conclusion was thoughtful as well as entertaining.
Ambition meets ability in this British contribution to Perth International Comedy Festival 2013, an erudite laugh-fest with a self-deprecatingly engaging presenter.
4 stars out of five.
Gordon Southern’s A Brief History of History
Presented by Julz Hay
Music and sound: Tim Whitt
PowerPoint Wrangling: Julz Hay
Performed by Gordon Southern
Part of the Perth International Comedy Festival
Astor Lounge, Mount Lawley
15 – 18 May 2013
