RHUM

Paul Warnes wears a suit, and a tie, and square glasses. Even his world-weary north-of-England accent sounds sort of square, calculated to render a person helplessly unprepared for the stampeding horde of scantily clad Tartars he unleashes three seconds into his act. By scantily clad Tartars, we of course mean jokes, about the Heisenberg uncertainty principle (what else?), the sexual compensations of weighing 135kg, mothers-in-law, and wives so fantastically shrewish they bond with sharks. Even as the Tartars shock and awe, Warnes remains witheringly deadpan. The mother-in-law/wife theme is old, and probably doesn’t deserve to be revived in Warnes’ repertoire, especially given that he’s at his funniest when he retreats back into squareness and recites finely turned rhyming quatrains (about condoms). But he is, throughout, a deft and well-groomed performer.

Rich Ceisler, meanwhile, is a veritable meteorological phenomenon. Direct from Boston, he kicks off with heart-warming tales of cultural bewilderment. There’s the customs desk in Melbourne, where a squishy American grape at the bottom of a suitcase causes more angst than a couple of kalashnikovs stashed down the trousers. Then there’s the cuteness of Australian English, wherein “breakfast” is “breaky”, “football” is “footy”, a present’s a “prezzy”, and perhaps “nailclippers” – confiscated by airport security – are “clippies”. Ceisler’s performance, a seeming ramble through his life and times, is held together by the magnetic force of his personality, his lyrical body, and an endearing willingness to tell the locals how much he loves their town. It works, and it doesn’t matter if their town comes across as just a little ridiculous in the process.

Michael Chamberlain MCs with a kind of manic enthusiasm. He banters comfortably with the audience on subjects as diverse as cars, television shows, and clitorises. His jokes are well worn and practised – maybe a bit too practised – but his manner is pleasant and unassuming and he knows when to break, and when to slide to the next performer.

What you’re left wondering, after two hours of this unlikely trio, is whether they haven’t underestimated their audience, and settled for a steady trickle of “tee hee penis”, when they might have turned their energies to actual stuff. Like politics. Or life. Chris Franklin’s unscheduled performance of ‘Jack off Australia! Jack off Australia! Who’ll come and jack off Australia with me?,’ a Waltzing Matilda-inspired ode to a Union-Jack free flag and a nation of masturbators, gets as close as anyone gets to actually saying something worth saying.

3.5/5