For two and a half hours of comedy from a line up of accomplished kiwi comedians, it’s worth the drive if you’re travelling from other parts of town, and there’s hardly an excuse if Papakura’s Hawkins Theatre is your local. It’s a great little theatre and a cosy place to dose up on your quota of laughter.

Best Medicine is running for two nights only. Hosted by Michelle A’Court, Friday’s show featured Ewen Gilmour, Justine Smith and Jeremy Elwood, while Saturday’s will be hosted by Brendhan Lovegrove,with Jan Maree, Jamie Bowen and Gish.

Our hostess Michele A’Court is an entertaining mixture of composure and nuttiness. In between acts, she gives a cross-section of her various dislikes, having a go at young people, skinny people, fat people, ex-husbands, teenaged daughters, you name it, letting rip her spring-loaded, ‘middle-aged’ rancour without apology. She regales us with additional witty commentary on the so-called economy and how it affects her shoe shopping, Auckland’s public transport and terrorism, some funny stuff on NZ politicians.

Michele sets the tone for a warm, friendly atmosphere, lots of swearing and plenty of audience involvement (too much towards the end – wow, those Papakura-ians are a chatty lot, and they seem to start drinking pretty early…). But Friday was a fun night and it seemed a good time was had by all.

Justine Smith is confidently aloof and gleefully self-deprecating as she sticks the knife in with regard to relationship deterioration, ‘crocs’, children, teetotallers… and twists it. She’s lightly disparaging of the talkative audience, pointedly ignoring the more unintelligible squeaks and hollers because let’s face it, her anecdotes about horrible relationships and lovely drugs are much more interesting.

Jeremy Elwood is funny and relaxed, even after inadvertently identifying me as the reviewer when he’s singling out audience members to ask what they do for a living, and then asking if I’ve reviewed him previously (don’t go there!). I wanted to offer reassurances that this time I was enjoying myself quite nicely thank you, but he didn’t require any.

His quick-witted, easy narrative is seasoned with plenty of funny cracks on a wide range of subjects, such as the New Zealand military, smoking, Christians, how we should remember how safe we are in our little remote country.

He’s got nastier since I saw him a couple of years ago (thank Christ), and is letting his quirkiness run its course, which manifests itself in delightfully convoluted observations – the kind reached only by spending a lot of time with your own thoughts, over-analysing everything (a quality shared by many of my favourite comics).

Ewen Gilmour, our favourite gangly Westie, was a good sport with the tedious (but good-natured) hecklers who all wanted to be comedians – they seemed to outnumber the rest of us, so he went with it. He’s good at reading his audience and he’s generally an all-round good bloke.

Apparently he’s not only going to run for Mayor of our proposed ‘super city’, the Jesus look-alike is also a marriage celebrant these days – what a community minded guy! He comes across as someone you’d be glad to have as a neighbour. There’s nothing very ‘out there’ in his traditional stand-up routine, most of it boils down to sex, but he also imparts some insights into giving up smoking and being on a city council (‘Everyone should do it! Well, no, not all of you…’). 
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