All Wear Bowlers
Parramatta Riverside Theatre (9th Jan, 2006)
Physical comedy is both difficult and rewarding. The rewards come from excellent timing and an audience willing to follow a joke, however perplexing. Perplexing is probably the best way to describe the premise of All Wear Bowlers where characters Wyatt and Earnest are thrown out of their comfort zone (a film on a lonely, seemingly endless road) onto the stage. The intro is a brilliant piece of film interaction where the comedians pass between the stage and the screen until they are finally forced to confront the audience... and boiled eggs start playing tricks on them.
It's hard to tell how much of their performance is scripted and how much is ad lib, but there are some stand-out moments including a sketch involving a fight over a newspaper, the regurgitation of the boiled eggs and a partially creepy ventriloquism act. The two also regularly enter the fourth wall of the audience for several laughs at others' expense.
Not quite sure what it all means - absurdism, Samuel Beckett and Charlie Chaplin come to mind - but an entertaining way to spend about an hour.
*** - not without its humorous charms
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