Have you ever seen that show 7 Days on the telly, late night Fridays on Tv3?  7 Days Live is heaps like that only live on stage with an audience of over a thousand. 

Everything from the show is here, and more: the failed cracks that get edited out of the live show, the successful ones that are simply too perverse, pornographic, scatological, culturally insensitive or otherwise unacceptable for broadcast.  Those familiar with the show will be thinking “considering what does get aired they must get pretty disgusting!” …You’d better believe it.

I had presumed said dubious content would be edited and the highlights played on TV as a special episode.  However there was no sign of any cameras or crews, indicating that this is to be an exclusive live experience – kind of special but also a bit of a shame. 

Of course, given the immediacy of the current affairs material this motley bunch of slight-to-middlingly overweight, suit-jacket and casual pants wearing smart-asses – and Urzila Carlson – are riffing on it would become dated fast, and not warrant countless repeat screenings as does AotearoHA and other such live gala shows.

In the first section, a single centre down-stage mic augers the omnibus of short straight-standup routines from the participating comedians.  The unmistakable off-stage voice of Jeremy Corbett exuberantly introduces tonight’s host Jeremy Corbett, who duly enters to advise us that this whole 7 Days live tour concept is woefully ill-conceived and therefore has been cancelled, especially as we’d all no doubt prefer to be home watching the excitement of our great nation’s general election results slowly unfold. 

Corbett’s trademark gruff, cheeky repartee breaks the ice effectively, and as each of the six players have their ten minutes of solo stage time we get a clear picture of the personality types in attendance: smirky, incredulous and slightly retarded Steve Wrigley; plus-sized, depraved and downright scary Urzila Carlson; casually impudent, vaguely sinister Jeremy Elwood; bald, smug pratt Paul Ego; cynical wookie Ben Hurley; and beloved amiable sleazebag Dai Henwood – also the only one who doesn’t appear at all overweight (which for his height would put him at about 24 kilos). 

As the first half winds up, the audience is invited to participate in a caption-writing game where we are shown a picture (John Key holding a finger up to the screaming baby he’s holding) and a mobile number to text our entries to.  The winning caption (‘Show me the dummy!’) is announced at the end of the show and its writer ‘Suzy’ is awarded a Grab-a-Seat domestic plane ticket for her wit.  Not a bad dollars-per-word ratio! 

Finally, once the fairly budget-looking counters are set in place, as is the slightly more lubricated audience, the game proper begins.  Introductions are kept short, since we’ve already been acquainted, and its straight into a game of What’s the Story?, where teams supply commentaries to soundless news clips from the past seven days.  As it’s election night, each team is given an opportunity to overdub actual live election coverage as it happens; a reasonably effective one-off gimmick. 

The remainder of the show plays out exactly as you’d expect: a live, unedited episode of the popular television programme where a number of different games based on the current affairs of the preceding period of time implied in the title, are played as a thinly veiled means of displaying their spontaneous wisecracking chops. 

Tonight’s set includes the one where you fill in the blank headlines, the one where you guess the question to the answer provided, and everyone’s favourite ‘My Kid Could Draw That’ where contestants try and deduce the prevailing topic of primary school children’s drawings.  It’s a shame the children don’t present their pictures live, although they’re possibly better off not hearing the players’ comments if they’re sensitive to any degree of ridicule. 

It would also have been good to have other games which I think would play well in a live arena, such as the one where a jobbing musician plays parodic ditties on current news topics, or the one where they bring in a prominent politician and try to get them to say ‘yes’ or no’ by asking probing questions.  I’m not certain whether these or other games in the 7 Days repertoire will get a look-in during the ensuing nationwide tour. 

Three hours passes fairly quickly, considering.  Corbett’s standard random point-scoring system is ultimately overridden when at the end the audience gets to choose the winning team by applause-o-meter.  Tonight’s winners were Henwood’s Team 2, by about seventy decibels. 

So you get what you get, which all in all is good for a laugh or three, and who knows – might even accidentally provide food for thought on any of the numerous political issues covered in the course of the evening.  

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