Review by Steve Bennett

But beware if you’re expecting a traditional three-act format. As narrator Tommy Dean helpfully explains at the start: ‘This show contains no narrative structure.’

Instead, it’s a bizarre hotch-potch of absurd ideas, daft songs and even dafter sound effects with a manic energy redolent of the Goons. The fact that this performance is being recorded for the Triple J radio station only makes the parallels stronger, both in a good way and a bad.

Like its illustrious forebears, The Sunshine Factory can sometime be too self-indulgently weird for its own good. The duo’s propensity to use far more words than necessary, to never pass by an opportunity for a nonsensical aside and to create a ceaseless barrage of non-sequiturs can be difficult, if not downright impossible, to follow. It would probably help to have just one normal character in the eye of this storm of strangeness. As it is, everyone’s just a little too kooky to relate to.

But amid the steam-of-consciousness chaos comes some wonderful comedy moments, with damn fine jokes and imaginative, well-written scenes jostling for position. Daft adverts for such essentials as water, money and alcohol stand out, as do an increasingly satanic lullaby and the twee little jingle that accompanies the phrase ‘circle friends’, which occurs more frequently than you’d think.

Special mention must be made of the show’s sound effects foley/stunt tapdancer, valiantly producing a huge range of audio backgrounds live and on cue, however demanding the script becomes.

It’s hard not to be impressed by the team’s vigour and the limitless imagination Callan and Simmons have brought to the script, which can be brilliantly funny. It could do with a bit of editing, that’s all. p>Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
May 2006

Review date: 1 Jan 2006
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett