Oh, the comedy! One of the most talked about events of the year – and as equally anticipated – has been the debut of the world famous Just For Laughs Festival in Australia, courtesy of the fine folks at the Sydney Opera House. With John Cleese, Martin Short and Margaret Cho leading a star studded pack, it would be safe to say they have set off (what we hope will become) an annual tradition with a bang. In the final night of festivities, one of the most popular comics from the UK, Russell Howard took over the Sydney Opera Theatre for eighty minutes of laughs.
When placed against the rest of the Just For Laughs ensemble, Russell Howard is relatively unknown here in Australia – a fact well represented by the largely British crowd. The guy is massive over there. Massive. Like “I sold out Wembly Arena” massive. Beyond this fact, I did very little research on the man ahead of the gig, watched very little of his stand up and went in with the sort of fresh eyes and ears one rarely enjoys at these sorts of things. Needless to say, I was prepared to be surprised, enlightened, entertained… whatever the case may be.
Unfortunately, as I often find with the more fanatically popular comedians with my generation (Dane Cook anyone?) there is little unique to find in Howard’s style of comedy. That is to say, he fits squarely into the “entertainment” bracket of the aforementioned.
But entertaining he was, wasting not a single breath to fit as much as he possibly could into his 80 minute set. Kicking off the show with a bit about homosexuality, the run of the content was fairly predictable: an even spatter of sex bum and poo jokes, Justin Bieber references, sound effects (plenty of them, and from cheers in the crowd at times one would imagine he was doing some well known ‘bits’), silly voices, some current affairs chatter – e.g. London riots (one can’t be accused of having written the jokes months in advance after all!) and just about anything and everything he could think of.
So what sets Russell apart from the others… other than having a successful TV show (Russell Howard’s Good News) that is? For one, he makes the comedy deeply personal. Everything relates to his family, his experiences and his life. You’re laughing with him and occasionally at him. His delivery was impeccable and he completely owned the room. He could gauge the crowd well and moved on quickly from topics that weren’t working. Like a kid who just ate a shitload of candy, Howard clearly works on his feet. And Fast. No small feat.
He impressed this fact well with a not-so-typical encore: taking questions from the crowd. This led to a few awkward moments for people in the crowd, and showed this is a guy who knows how to get a crowd laughing, whatever the topic.
So while Russell couldn’t be accused of leading a new wave of ingenious comedians, it’s safe to say Russell knows his audience well and does a damn good job of keeping everyone entertained. Safe comedy? Sure. But it could be argued that what’s safe is what’s hardest to do… Because as any open mic night will tell you, it can all go so terribly wrong. But tonight I left pretty damn entertained, and there’s not much wrong with that.
