Bob Franklin & Steven Gates: Stubborn Monkey Syndrome
Live Review
Melbourne International Comedy Festival

If Twilight Zone means more to you than a fanzine for fey vampires, Bob Franklin and Steven Gates’ spooky psychological comedy has plenty to recommend it.

This atmospheric spoof chiller starts with Gatey – better known as one of the legs of musical comedy trio Tripod – stumbling through the dark in desperate search of Franklin, while wondering aloud why characters in horror films always wonder aloud. Could it be a clumsy method of plot exposition?

Such tongue-in-cheek meta-comedy is a hallmark of Stubborn Monkey Disorder, frequently deployed to defuse the tension the pair so skilfully build up, despite a minimal of theatrical assistance.

For instead of Franklin, Gates comes across a man in a white coat. He’s Hugh Knox, a psychologist who looks very much like last year’s Barry nominee, only with a disconcerting soft Scottish accent. The peculiar medic then raises questions of reality and the human psyche, taking his de facto patient into a series of flashbacks to character-defining incidents in his past.

There’s an appealing mordant wit running through these episodes – though they never react the gothic heights of something like The League Of Gentlemen. But the duo almost fight against the wry format, getting the biggest laughs when they break the suspense, with knowing in-jokes or with their struggles not to corpse as they imagine tragic back-stories for troubled audience members.

It’s an ambitious show, with an imaginative narrative which neatly comes full circle as the real reason for all Gatey’s spurious disorders is revealed. But although smartly done, there’s not quite enough intrigue or humour to sustain the duration, so even at 45 minutes, it’s about 15 minutes too long. Perhaps two separate tales of the unexplained back-to-back would have been a better option.

But as a change from the usual stand-up fare, this weird and wry offering is to be lauded The biggest mystery, though, is why two such established festival names are struggling to find half-decent audience numbers.