Melbourne International Comedy Festival review by Steve Bennett

Leonard Nimoy’s first autobiography was called I Am Not Spock, and was largely seen as an attempt to distance himself from the Star Trek character and establish himself as a serious, versatile actor in his own right. And if that was its aim, it failed spectacularly.

Similarly, Heath Franklin’s May I Borrow A Crisis? could be named I Am Not Chopper. And similarly, it fails to establish him as a great comedian beyond his alter-ego.

He comes on stage in the familiar tache, shades and polo shirt of the hardened criminal, which he slowly sheds, re-assembling them on a dummy head on stage, so the ex-con’s ghost hovers over the whole hour.

Chopper has indeed, been good to Franklin. He admits he’s got a good life, a soul mate of a wife with whom he bonds over Call Of Duty, two beautiful kids, and a successful job that, aside from the travelling and the occasional rowdy gig that he describes as ‘bogan day care’, is a blast. Life is pretty, pretty sweet.

However, Franklin admits to frustration that because of the character, he can’t really express his real self on stage – that he drinks soya milk, for example. But perhaps he shouldn’t have expressed that here, either, as he comes across like a rather sanctimonious vegan preacher expressing his disgust for ‘inter-species’ milk.

A much funnier slice of observational comedy involves hotel keys that are too easily wiped, which is a strong piece of First World Problems rage, very easy to identify with. But it’s the exception rather than the rule: another bit on convenience of screw-top beer over the sort than needs an opener is astonishingly inconsequential. Then there’s a chunk of ‘kids say the darndest things’ and a random ‘what if Bane from Batman did stand-up?’ interlude that would be a spot-on parody of a desperate-for-ideas hack comic, if it wasn’t done so sincerely.

Is this really the material that he wanted to get out, but couldn’t because of Chopper? For here is the nub of his problem: that there’s not much in his charmed life that makes for good comedy. To his credit, that is acknowledged as the very theme of the show, but acknowledging it is different from solving it.

Franklin’s idea is that he will borrow issues from the audience’s lives, far more screwed up than his, to use as the emotive, heart-rending soliloquy that he thinks a comedy show needs. It’s a trick he does more than one, and while the fact he can improvise such a monologue above a bed of manipulative music is impressive, it’s not actually funny.

Also, the audience interaction tonight goes awry, leaving an awkwardness hanging in the air. As Chopper, he can presumably threaten all sorts of gruesome reprisals on hecklers. In this small room he hones in on admittedly odd interjection too hard, and elsewhere just makes the atmosphere weird.

The show is wound up with another stirring speech, this time from his own life, and by this stage it’s not sure if he’s being sincere, or just hitting the same joke about cheesy show endings one last time. The irony is, of course, that 90 per cent of shows with emotional endings are better than this generally disappointing offering. For the jokes and the theme here both need to be hardened the fuck up, to coin a catchphrase.

Review date: 10 Apr 2014
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett