Being funny is hard.  It takes tons of care and practice to go from “guy/girl who can make their friends laugh at a party” to “working comedian.”  So I love the project behind Aik’N’Sides: three young comedians – Aiken Hutcheson, Cameron McCleod and Snap presented by Ruse Websites (yes, that is his name) – band together and tour the country while honing their funny skills. It’s a great division of labour that allows each developing comedian to play with their persona and style without having to make a full hour of comedy. 

First up is Cameron McCleod, who brings a near-manic energy to the stage.  His approach to his set is really smart: he makes a game out of his need to overcome the audience’s inherent fear of being mocked and establish a rapport with us.  Or rather, with one person chosen to be the avatar for us. 

There’s an aspect of verbal clowning with this: each time McCleod opens up and tells a revealing story, he ‘icks out’ that particular audience member even more, getting ever further and further away from his goal.  It’s a clever approach, and as someone who totally fears sitting in the front row at stand-up shows, it’s great to see someone tackling this anxiety head-on. 

Now, if only the material matched it.  While the basic setup and conceit are strong, the individual joke setups often don’t match the payoffs.  In addition, McCleod has a tendency to default to borderline-homophobic dick jokes when he runs out of material.  Literally every time someone else’s dick gets a mention, it is as some sort of hypothetical punishment. Yes, you have a dick.  So does approximately half the population of the planet.  Get over it.  That said, I think these things are workable, and given the intelligence in the overall design of his comedy set, I think McCleod can fix this. 

The only thing I remember about Snap is that he has dreadlocks and wore a floral jacket. 

Aiken Hutcheson is the show’s ‘headliner,’ which seems an odd designation given the relative parity in time and skill between the comedians.  Hutcheson has a 90s throwback style of comedy – think Jerry Seinfeld – that is really refreshing after some of the rather self-involved comedy the precedes him. 

His set is a series of short riffs on various things that he – or his friend who studies biology – finds interesting.  And the choices are genuinely interesting, from the shark /squid dilemma faced by swimmers to space to stories from the world of food service. 

Aiken has a good eye for the absurd and is willing to let us laugh with and at him.  A  brilliant moment develops spontaneously as a couple in the audience identifies the restaurant he has been trying oh-so-carefully not to name for the entire set, and Hutcheson just goes with it.  It’s generous, and a great give-and-take. 

He’s playing with a quite ambitious structure to his set as well: each riff layers in a tiny joke for a callback later.  At the moment, that structure is about 80% there – his reincorporations come about five minutes too early in his set.  That said, Hutcheson is a young talent that I’m keen to see develop further.  And his impression of a squid is worth the price of admission alone. 

Aik’N’Sides is an incredibly ambitious show, and I admire the impulses and work that has gone into making this a New Zealand tour. And I wish more developing comedians would challenge themselves this way.  I look forward to what these three men bring in future.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer