Image: thebutterflyclub.com
Comedy sketch duo Dan Allemann & Simon Godfrey are well-known around the Melbourne comedy scene as This Is Siberian Husky and And To Uncle Ted, The Lion Tamer, I Bequeath My Hand Towels is the show they performed at this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
The show is typical of their two-man sketch style with a variety of oddball stories and incidents that eventually overlap and bleed into each other. The duo reached a career high-point when they unveiled their show Boneshaker at the MICF – it was lauded by both critics and audiences and was the recipient of the Brian McCarthy Memorial Moosehead Award.
Unfortunately, this show is not of the same high standard, with lots of missed and unfunny gags, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some uproariously funny moments. Some of the highlights include a sketch interpretation of a snail dying, a crazed and frightening reverse parker, and three telepathic siblings in the womb.
Part of the issue is that the guys seem to need to qualify their jokes instead of bask in the glory of the absurd. The snail sketch was outrageously funny, but a small addition at the end negated much of the hilarity and remove the silliness of the sketch, the whole reason the audience was in stitches.
There are moments of genius in this show but there are too many moments that fall flat, and that’s disappointing when you know what This Is Siberian Husky’s true, high capabilities are.
The guys are in need of some slash and burn in the scripting and also some tighter narrative to draw some of the sketches together – something they did so beautifully in Boneshaker.
Also, this British style of sketch comedy (think Monty Python) has had a resurgence in recent times and via MICF, Australian audiences have seen some of the best, including the likes of Max & Ivan, who are consistently outstanding.
The guys of This Is Siberian Husky are capable of being ridiculously funny, as they prove in some of the sketches in And To Uncle Ted, The Lion Tamer, I Bequeath My Hand Towels. But (lord help me) in the words of Shannon Noll: You gotta lift.
Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
