Watching Percy Fagan Sleep

If my Nonna was to make the soup of this show the ingredients would be something like this:

• 2 cups of melodrama, roughly chopped
• 3 litres of character-based skits*
• 3 good looking, tall, long-haired men, finely sliced
• a dash of dance
• sixteen inches of narrative
• one metric slug of  the most amazing slow motion sequence I have ever seen (reader please note: I’ve never seen the Matrix)

Think younger Pajama Men with less Pajamas, but (interestingly) more beds. These three guys impressed me heaps ‘cause their surreal jaunt had that slick, well-rehearsed feel and their commitment was undying. I laughed hardest when stuff got chaotic and messy and slightly yelly. But maybe I’m just a fan of destruction, I did, after all, pay to see 2012 at the actual cinema.

Watching Percy Fagan Sleep is playing at Eurotrash Tue–Thur, Sat and Sun at 7pm until April 10.

  

*I don’t think I could even count the number of characters these guys tackle. It’s like one of those jars at a school fete except imagine instead of all jelly beans every lolly is a different lolly. That’s a lot of lollies. Favourites included Ming the patronising, Oprah-loving American, mopey English backpackers and a professional performer at Sovereign Hill.

Al’s Music Rant

Watching this show made me totally jelly of Al’s obviously impressive (and totally obsessive) musical knowledge. He just has it all. Up there. I imagine all the little chunks of his knowledge (music and otherwise) swimming around in his head and every now and then two of them crash into each other. Then suddenly he’s figured out who has stolen something from other artists to create every song in their repertoire, what the Pancake parlor has to do with music and how classic songs would sound if they were abused by some of today’s “artists”.

Al is just so darned likeable and his show is a living, breathing, repeatable example of what happens when you let people do what they love. This show could have so easily have been a snarky rant (it does have 'Rant' in the title, afterall). Instead Al blesses us with characters, song, dance and isn’t afraid of embarrassing himself (particularly evidenced by one moment in the show that is car-crash can’t look away amazing).  Even though Al and I clearly have very different taste in music (I’ll have you know I love Ke$ha, Al) I still loved his show and so did the guy up the back who emphatically agreed with all of Al's music nerd commentary.

Someone I was at this show with last night said afterwards “You know it’s a good show when you can’t pick out your favourite bit ‘cause there are too many”. Hear hear!

Al’s Music Rant is playing at Eurotrash Tue–Thur, Sat and Sun at 9pm until 10 April. 


Also here is Al's blog from whence the show came.