If you haven’t seen Paul Foot before, you’ll love this show. Unfortunately, if you have seen Paul Foot before, this show might generate a strong sense of deja-vu.
Foot is now well and truly a regular on Melbourne International Comedy Festival circuit, having made his debut in 2011’s Ash In The Attic, directed by The Mighty Boosh’s Noel Fielding. The show was a terrific entrée and widely lauded, both in Australia and overseas.
But each year Foot has returned down under, he has shown that while his humour and wild gesticulations are unpredictable, his show format is not.
As usual, Foot’s show, Hovercraft Symphony in Gammon # Major has an unconventional start, with an introduction that takes up almost half the running time.
The introduction includes a long run-down of material that has been excluded from the show for being too childish, including a brilliant section on how to truly take a terrible revenge on a Bed & Breakfast landlady.
The real show only begins after Foot has outlined exactly what’s going to happen with stunning accuracy, including sections such as Hindu humour and character comedy.
Some of the yarns this year are genuinely cracking, especially a strange musing about his attempt at parenthood, for which he selected a cauliflower.
Another story about a scotch-finger charged sado-masochism party draws huge laughs (“Imagine you’re wearing a rubber gimp mask and you’re trying to get a scotch finger in and all the crumbs are falling down”), while a tale about a poor woman who has to hide her uneaten sesame ravioli from her chef partner in a toilet cistern genuinely has the crowd in stitches.
A section on Hindu Humour, which actually felt much more like a surrealist’s nod to atheism, was extremely funny, as was his twice-enjoyed mounting of an audience member in the front row.
His local references are tight and appropriate and he even manages to slip in one or two call-backs towards the end, winning himself a cheer from a clearly delighted audience.
But there are so many reminders of previous shows: the delayed start, commentary to the technical staff, strange musings about homosexuals and random titbits selected from a list. There’s a formula emerging and it’s starting to take the fun out seeing Paul Foot.
Some elements of the formula still work – his bizarre facial expressions and noises, strange gestures, air humping and lovely mullet and of course his peculiar storytelling that can take you anywhere, any time.
But Foot needs to figure out a new formula for those of his fans who visit him at MICF festival each year and are looking for a fresh approach to deliver his serious surrealist talent.
Rating: 3 stars out of 5
Hovercraft Symphony in Gammon # Major
Paul Foot
The Hi-Fi Bar
March 26 – April 19
Melbourne International Comedy Festival
www.comedyfestival.com.au​
25 March – 19 April
