John Campbell Is A Serious Man
Live Review
Melbourne International Comedy Festival

John Campbell’s festival debut is a modest affair: 45 minutes, off the beaten track, with no ambitious theme or concept. The only frills are a couple of short films.

But that’s enough to prove him an adept gagsmith and a skilled communicator with a penchant for cheerfully pedantic one-liners.

He’s allegedly a serious man as he has low seratonin levels, making him a little more staid than the rest of the population. But that doesn’t manifest itself in any way other than a relatively low-key delivery, and is probably a veritable asset in his day job, working in a bank.

Certainly the gags are up to scratch, with an unarguable demonstration that he is in keen command of the pun with his opening section of ‘jokes that didn’t make it into tonight’s show’. His ‘hate letters’ are another effective way of delivering his quirky comedy that really hit the mark.

The longer-form anecdotes are not quite so robust, with an illustrated Mr Men story outlasting its welcome and his gallery of pictures of himself looking evil proving self-indulgent. But there’s fun to be had in his first-hand story of an ill-judged prank involving a street caricaturist.

Campbell seems to have a fair few friends in tonight, which makes it harder to calibrate the genuine laughter, but his engagement with those in the audience he doesn’t know hits a nice balance of good-mannered mockery.

Plus he’s a useful film-maker, as demonstrated by his well-shot mockumentary giving an alternative view of John Lennon’s killer Mark Chapman, which allows the central joke to unfold at a perfect pace. It’s obviously not made for the medium of live comedy, which means it sits rather awkwardly in a stand-up show, but there’s no denying it’s a well-crafted piece of work. Much like the rest of this quietly assured debut.