Your grandad would probably call Brendon Walsh a ‘scallywag’. In the poster for his show Bearded, Juvenile he’s referred to by Esquire magazine as a ‘rascal’. It’s true that Walsh, a return guest of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and host of podcast, The Bone Zone, clearly loves playing the fool and making others look like one too, but there’s nothing mean-spirited about it. Instead, as the title suggests, there’s a gleeful, mischievous quality to Walsh that’s instantly endearing, making him a real pleasure to watch.
Walsh kicks off the show asking you to ignore the sweat soaked through his shirt (sorry for acknowledging it here) and launches straight in to cover a lot of territory in an hour – from what aliens would make of our smoking habits, to the words that should be in the dictionary but are not, to tales of confusion in the supermarket’s produce section and the selectively paranoid nature of his biggest stoner friends.
He soon moves from the observational to his passion for pranks. A boring 9 to 5 job once saw him filling his days by crafting brilliantly crazed letters to stationery companies, and, though the archive is extensive, he reads just a selection, along with some of the replies. In recent years Walsh has also spent a fair bit of time and money on altering billboards around Los Angeles – think of him as a less earnest Banksy.
Walsh’s style is relaxed, conversational and improvisational. He laughs at his own jokes, his tone can be mocking, but the crowd as are comfortable with him from when he steps on stage to when he steps off.
If there is one thing that seems entirely unnecessary in his show, it is the background music – once accompanying a slide show, then again underneath Walsh’s closing story. At one point Walsh asks for the music to be turned down, but it actually could be turned off as it’s too distracting to add anything to the hour.
It would be remiss not to mention the brash, obnoxious heckler that tries to single-handedly bring down Walsh’s show, storming to the front of stage and accusing him of stealing jobs from Australians (yes, really) before professing her love and admiration for him as she is carted away. However, we cannot dwell on it either – Walsh choses not to, moving along rather effortlessly for the sake of his audience. And thankfully each time she is thrown out (that’s right, she somehow gets past staff not once, but twice), the laughs actually get louder.
By the end, the crowd is putty in Walsh’s hands, forever bonded in trauma.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Bearded, Juvenile
By Brendon Walsh
Banquet Room, Victoria Hotel, 215 Little Collins St
Melbourne International Comedy Festival
www.comedyfestival.com.au
8 – 20 April
