FORGET YOUR TROUBLES C'MON GET HOOPSYBy Claire Hooper
Victoria Hotel - Acacia Room, 215 Little Collins Street,
Tuesday-Saturday 7.15pm, Sunday 6.15pm, until April 26,
$16.90/$19.90
Rating: 2/5
LIKE a stone skipping across the pond of comedy, Claire Hooper's Forget Your Troubles C'mon Get Hoopsy, bounces brightly but fails to make a big splash.
The show falls short of the mark she set with earlier, more inventive work.
Compared with last year's Storybook, and especially her award-winning 2006 show Oh, Forget Your Troubles C'mon Get Hoopsy feels slight, even bland, while her material seems at odds with itself.
Lighter routines about fame, farts and marriage fail to gel with more sincere material about depression.
Hooper is at her best when performing routines close to her heart.
The laughs when she describes the rakish charms of North Melbourne are deep and genuine, but material about practical jokes she performs on herself and the Discovery Channel fail to raise more than a chuckle.
A mildly entertaining show about suffering from mild depression.
This review first appeared in The Age on Thursday April 9, 2009.
2 comments:
Hi
Can't say I agree with much of this.
While there were indeed a few things that could be dispensed with, such as the skits on practical jokes, on the whole the show was a hoot and the crowd seemed thoroughly entertained.
Not being from Australia, or having a TV for the last year, I was wholly unfamiliar with her work but look forward to hearing more.
Mark Sinnott
Melbourne/ Ireland
Each to their own, Mark - which makes reviewing comedy such a fraught matter - but wearing my critics hat, I found Hooper's show lazy and simplistic; perhaps the curse of TV comedy, as she can definitely do better.
Who else have you seen/enjoyed at the festival, by the way?
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