Review by Steve Bennett

Musical comedy, once treated like little more than a pariah because of the number of witless acts who mistakenly thought changing a word or two of a pop hit made for instant hilarity, has come back from the cold. Now the likes of Bill Bailey or Tim Minchin are arena-fillers, as the genre, so perfectly matched to the attention span of a YouTube viewer, becomes an increasingly broad church. OK, so there may be a few too many cutsey girls armed with ukuleles and whimsy, but on the whole musical comedy has had a renaissance over the past four or five years. Heck, even Amp’d, Montreal’s musical showcase, is being televised – that’s how popular it’s become.

Compere Weird Al Yankovic never went away, of course, having been affectionately mocking chart-toppers for the best part of 35 years. He often falls into that lyric-swap category, even though his offerings are done with impeccable detail. Tonight, though, we got an zydeco-style accordion-driven medley through recent Top Ten tracks, from Lady Gaga to Justin Bieber. Maybe not all that funny – though the animated backgrounds certainly helped – but a real toe-tapper. Better yet, is his show-stopper, Wanna B Ur Lover, compiled entirely from cheesy chat-up lines, sometimes subverted, sometimes not.

First up, the petulant Bo Burnham, who seems to have a love-hate relationship with the music that made his name. He bashes the piano angrily and gets apparently frustrated with the conventions of musical comedy, not bothering to finish verses or getting the gag over as quickly as possible. Such prickly attitude is very effective, and when he performs a parody of every bland romantic ballad ever written, with its more primal subtext occasionally bursting through the sugar frosting, the contempt in which he holds the genre is palpable. The stand-up between the bursts of music is inventive and offbeat too – although one horribly ill-considered and out-of-character line about girls ‘dressed for a rape’ lets him down.

Garfunkel and Oates have become something of poster girls for quirky, indie, hipster comedy. But while their folksy uke/guitar strumming is jaunty enough, the content is slight – an obvious pisstake of nutjob right-winger Pat Robertson who genuinely compared homosexuality to sex with ducks (how can you even hope to make that more funny than the truth?) and homely ditties about hand-jobs and the sexual thrills of a vibrating go-kart. This is definitely a case of music propping up material that, as stand-up, would struggle to cut any mustard. It’s pleasing enough on the ears, though.

Rap duo Organised Rhyme certainly have a tiny but ultra-devoted band of fans, with mere mention of their name causing about a dozen men of a certain age to lose their shit: hollering and yelping like overstimulated frat boys. Very apt, as that could also describe the act. For the rest of the audience not in the know, OR was formed in Ottawa two decades ago by Tom Green, the arrested-development rabble rouser somehow always described as a comedian, despite the lack of tangible evidence, and some other guy. Give them their dues, they are pretty good rappers, in the Beastie Boys mould. In fact, just a bit too good, as there seemed little comedy here; as they bounce around yelling ‘Check the OR/You like it so far’ it’s hard to see how this is much different from ‘Ya down with OPP/Yeah you know me’. This is how men lived out their music-god fantasies before Guitar Hero.

There was a lot of stage-setting in the later half of the show, covered by a studio warm-up guy who was a pretty darned good beatboxer, but had the personality of a flannel – so that made for a slightly awkward atmosphere.

Still, it was worth the wait for Reggie Watts, his loop machine and incredible voice. As usual, this was a strange, meaningless mish-mash of a set, from a terrible French accent, via a hugely slowed-down speech to a romantically soulful presentation of near-the-knuckle sexual material. All very trippy, with laughter the only logical response to such lack of logic.

The best was saved to last, though, with Tim Minchin – strangely described both before and after his set as ‘British’. His catchy song Prejudice was unfortunately interrupted mid build-up by an incomprehensible holler from the audience, but it didn’t throw him, before his bitchily sarcastic newer song Good Book, a rationalist rag lively in both tempo and thought, made clear his anti-religious views.

It was classy end to an entertaining night, even if the music tended to overwhelm the comedy for several of the contributors.

Published: 30 Jul 2011