Gordon Southern: Nisolation

Melbourne International Comedy Festival review

If you’re going to make an entire show about being in Covid lockdown, it’s probably a good idea not to make it too realistic - advice that comes unfortunately too late for Gordon Southern to heed. 

The English comic ended up staying in Adelaide for a bit longer than the original 'two to three weeks' he had planned last March in the hope that this pandemic thing would blow over, even beginning a new relationship in the most extreme circumstances imaginable. 

On paper this would appear to be pretty good fodder for a stand-up hour from an experienced storyteller, but unfortunately a lack of focus, some avoidable over-engineering and a bewildering mixture of tones results in the sort of lockdown time drag that surely could not have been the intention. 

Southern has a winning, slightly manic energy that brings Robin Williams to mind, but while powering through some solid, straightforward observational gear he takes some unexpected and decidedly strange detours, patently struggling to bring everyone else in the room along on the ride. 

By way of example, attempts to illustrate the cabin fever that Covid engendered leads to a painfully long angler fish personification as well as a baffling dog/cat hybrid character that he created to entertain his girlfriend. It's quite possibly illustrative of some of the bizarre efforts made to offset boredom and anxiety in the early stages of lockdown, but not exactly relatable. 

Meanwhile, a surfeit of audio effects and underwhelming visual slideshow make an already busy show even more unwieldy, and a list of box-ticking callbacks heaped into the closing stretch either require explanation or land with a clunk.

Southern is clearly a talented performer and there’s some enjoyable segments here, so it’s difficult to know whether the incongruity of styles and content is consistent with previous efforts or partly the result of a spectacularly unusual year. Happily, he’ll apparently be calling Australia home for a while to come, so plenty of time to find out.  

Read More

Published: 8 Apr 2021

Comedy Of Ashes

Even with the very saleable England versus Australia…
24/01/2011

Gordon Southern

This is the fourth Fringe show from the solid Gordon…
15/08/2010

Gordon Southern

How familiar this situation is becoming - another…
1/01/2001

Past Shows

Edinburgh Fringe 2001

Gordon Southern


Edinburgh Fringe 2003

Gordon Southern: My Drums Hell


Edinburgh Fringe 2006

Gordon Southern: The Solutions


Edinburgh Fringe 2007

Gordon Southern: Stamp Stamp


Edinburgh Fringe 2010

Gordon Southern: Borders


Edinburgh Fringe 2013

Gordon Southern: The Kerfuffle


Edinburgh Fringe 2016

Gordon Southern: Long Story Short


Agent

Glorious Management
Contact by email
Lower Ground Floor
79 Noel Road
N1 8HE
Office: 020 7704 6555

We see you are using AdBlocker software. Chortle relies on advertisers to fund this website so it’s free for you, so we would ask that you disable it for this site. Our ads are non-intrusive and relevant. Help keep Chortle viable.