A young crowd has flocked to see Rose Matafeo and Heidi O’Laughlin embark on their ‘adventure lecture’ to educate us on that which is uncool. They proclaim themselves the third and fourth most qualified for the job in the Auckland/Waikato region.

Unassuming stooge, Joseph Harper, has the task of warming up the audience before the main act and notching up their coolness factor by comparison. And warm us up he does. The diamond-patterned-vest-wearing epitome of uncool reads his entire piece haltingly from a notebook without looking up, except to frown at us when we laugh at something that wasn’t meant to be funny. He gets us going at high rate of laughs per minute and I hope he becomes a permanent fixture of the NZ comedy scene.

Heidi and Rose’s very tongue-in-cheek analysis is both a guide to the cool and the uncool. Though what becomes clear is that it’s an impossible paradox: the state of being cool is a tenuous one, subject not only to fickle consensus but also destroyed by it – it’s cool to be uncool, even (especially) if no one notices how much you’re not trying. And though their self-conscious stage personalities think they’re cool, they’re not even… Does that make Rose and Heidi the ultimate in cool? Who cares? Not them.

Rose has the awkward energy of a hyperactive puppy trying hard to behave, and dominates the ‘presentation’ in a chatty, sincere way. She reprimands Heidi when she tries to insert bits that aren’t meant to be in the show, and nips the music in the bud (provided by Brendon Green, lounging at the side with his guitar) any time it whiffs of uncool.

They present their ‘lecture’ in segments: Hairstyles, Fashion, How to take drugs in a cool way, the Philosophy of Cool, Dating, the most uncool subjects in comedy, Music, Daytime TV, with well-chosen and very funny images projected on a screen to illustrate their examples.

However, they introduce ideas that sometimes aren’t followed through. For example the Philosophy of Cool is confusing and brushed over too quickly. Rose blurts something about Plato, which I didn’t catch, then moves onto to something completely different. We already know that mullets and the Venga Boys aren’t cool. I wanted them to dig deeper.

Structurally it’s a bit soupy. A Guide to the Uncool deviates from its format without warning and turns out to be an endearingly piecemeal variety show, incorporating songs, dance, performance art, an ad spoof, audience teasing, and a scroggin scramble, in between lecture items. Some of it is only very loosely related to the central premise, but most of it is warranted because they get to slip in some very funny jokes/scenarios.

Patchiness notwithstanding, the pair are energetic, unpretentious and full of ideas, and though the first night was a bit bumpy, there are frequent moments of pure joyous comedy. I overhead Heidi saying after the show that they’d accidentally missed out some of the jokes. More than likely the show will improve as it ages during the week.

For a finale they go back to the lecture format and let us in on the big secret: what does it mean to be cool? You have to go along to find out the answer to that one. 
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