Pointing The Funny Bone At White Fellas
The Age
Friday April 15, 2005
NATIVES GETTING FUNNY Melbourne Town Hall, 5.30pm tomorrow
AT A festival that periodically sags beneath the heft of corn-fed twenty-somethings whining about the minutiae of share house bathrooms, Natives Getting Funny offers a welcome thematic relief. Five performers, each with indigenous heritage, offer five distinct angles on the world and all its oddest parts.The Ilbijerri Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Theatre, bowing to demands of its membership for "a good laugh", has set aside its raft of more serious works to buoy the indigenous community with a chuckle or three.All performers, each new to stand-up, offer strong performances. MC Lionel Austin's tales of micro-managing the subtlest daily disrespect are delivered with wit and confidence.Dennis "Den the Fish" Fisher, wearing an Akubra and enviable panache, concocts the kind of comic persona that has been all but lost in our hyperbolic Crocodile Hunter surge of faux-Australiana.Off-duty author and broadcaster Lisa Bellear seems an absolute sweetheart with a keen sting. When she adopts her Mystic Dreamtime pose, a coin drops and we acknowledge that this quaint, palatable version of aboriginality is just another performance.Tammy Anderson presents a bogan bride whose Frankston nuptials are cause for much melancholic mirth.The most likeably savage disruption of the night comes courtesy of former Tiddas songstress Lou Bennett. As soon as this indigenous woman appears wearing white male drag you think: why hasn't anyone done this before? Her craven Captain Cook is pitch-perfect.
© 2005 The Age