Emma Olsen was one of my favourite acts in last year’s festival.  I described her performance at the Lindauer Comedy Divas as "bright and brilliant… leaves the audience breathless."  Not so here at the Bluenote where she instead leaves us bewildered.

Olsen’s wide-eyed, faux-ironic delivery is still intact and with the right gags she pulls big laughs, but most of the material on display in this set just isn’t serving her.  She opts mostly for deadpan punchlines of the "…so we ate it" variety.  These can occasionally be devastating, and her timing is accurate if a little rushed, but too often the audience is left thinking "what was that all about?"

Olsen seems underprepared and sloppy; Where at other times she has turned her youthful style to her advantage, here the anecdotes of teenage drinking and idiocy are ‘you had to be there’ moments, remeniscent of conversations with actual teenagers.  A few more zingers and sharp observations could help to lift this out of banality.

However, she still clearly has the capacity to present original goods, as evidenced by a series of photos documenting the time a crane fell on her house.  This is the best part of the set, not drawing the biggest laughs but demonstrating Olsen’s under-exercised creative talent.

Second act Noor Razzak enters with gusto and delivers a high-energy set that contains all the substance and solidity lacking in Olsen’s.  His style is perhaps not so intriguing, but he has certainly put in the effort to make it succeed.

Razzak’s material centres mostly on his Iraqi-American heritage, which makes for ripe pickings.  He keeps the gags pumping, but there is a heavy-handedness to them which feels a little superficial at times.  Razzak is in a unique position to bring some real truth to his humour, but instead he plumps for overstated ironical stereotyping of himself as a hairy terrorist.

It is funny, though, and his typically over-the-top powerpoint presentation (of self at age 3 with massive moustache) gets a big response.  Full credit to Razzak for his energy and delivery.  He plays big and it gets results.

I’m a little unsure what brought these two together, aside from their status as ‘up and comers’.  As such, there is plenty of potential there to keep an eye on, but as a show in its own right The Double Header is still too rough and raw to propel Olsen and Razzak into the big league.  

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