Melbourne International Comedy Festival review by Steve Bennett

The desperation of cheap showbusiness pervades every crazy sketch in John Conway Tonight. He’s a lumbering, inelegant man desperately mugging his way through a selection of preposterous scenarios, producing an apparently contradictory hybrid of the corny and the creative.

His persona is a man who rates hard-sell showmanship – even of a fifth-rate variety – ahead of professionalism and dedication to perfecting his craft. And that’s probably not far removed from the comic beyond the white suit, Hawaiian shirt and flamboyant headwear. For the show is a chaotic, high-energy ride that sometimes coasts on tawdry charm and unfinished ideas – but then bursts into hilarious moments of preposterous stupidity.

To hope he would ever polish the best of what makes him sporadically brilliant is probably forlorn, for the scrappiness is such an intrinsic part of his considerable appeal – but while this is a great show, it feels like there’s an amazing one struggling to get out.

A stand-out highlight, for example, is his clumsy attempt to recreate the emotional pull of Dead Poets Society. His tragic need to get the scene right as a battered cardboard box beneath his arm leaks water hints at a pathos beneath the bluster that only makes things funnier. His take on picking up a girl in Aldi is hilarious, too, thanks entirely to a silly fictional brand name, while his attempts at introducing ‘American thumb’ as a synonym for thumbs-up is excellently misguided.

It’s not always clear why a particular scene is funny, or what he’s doing to make it so, but as the funniest fellow to fill a fez since Tommy Cooper, Conway has a naive stupidity that endears, and just the right level of recklessness and spontaneity. His banter with both the audience and an unseen sidekick (replacing Dayne Rathbone, whose solo career is soaring) zips along nicely too.

Some ideas, such as news for cats, variety turn The Great Sardini, or his anti-drama in which an apparently poignant war vignette amounts to nought are less successful – though even in failure Conway’s triumphant air only dips as low as nonchalance, and he just shrugs it off to move onto the next ridiculous idea.

The result is a patchy, cult hit – but one which contains some of the most joyfully funny moments you’ll see all festival. It’s certainly an American thumb from me.

Review date: 4 Apr 2014
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett