Tien Tran: If You Don’t Know, Now You Know

Tien Tran is the classic definition of a diamond in the rough. Yes, his set and scripting need some work, but this kid is gonna be big.

Tran has already been nominated for a raft of awards, including 2011 MICF RAW National Finalist, 2012 Sydney Fridge Best New Comedy Nominee and 2013 Sydney Comedy Festival Best Newcomer Nominee.

The biggest problem with Tien Tran’s show If You Don’t Know, Now You Know, is just that there isn’t really a narrative.

Essentially he’s standing up and telling different stories without a key theme or plan to draw them together – it doesn’t mean the jokes aren’t funny, it’s just than an hour is a long time to ramble through seemingly unconnected, yet funny, material.

While the majority of the jokes hit home and the laughter is consistent through the set, there are moments of ‘uh oh’.

One of those sections of the show was a series of AIDS-related jokes. Now, I have no issue with controversial material, but the rule is, if you’re going to go ‘there’ (and by ‘there’ I mean delving into topics like AIDS, Hitler and paedophilia – all of which he touches on) you had better be damned sure it’s going to be funny.

The AIDS jokes in particular fell flat as a pancake and in the process Tran created a lot of work for himself getting the audience back on side. There was also a section revolving around masturbation (that sounds worse than it was) which had a similar effect.

While a lot of his material predictably centred on what it was like to grow up as a Vietnamese teen, some of his best jokes centred on ‘scared white people’, an achievement given the majority of the audience were scared white people.

As with all reasonably young stand-ups, Tran needs a good director and script editor. He also needs one idea to link his material and to work on his scripting.

His delivery, his timing and his ideas are all there, it’s just the script editing and packaging that need some work.