Have you seen all of Breaking Bad?  Then you’ll probably enjoy this show.  Conversely, if you haven’t, then One Man Breaking Bad probably isn’t your baggie of blue meth. 

Miles Allen explodes onto the stage with energy and enthusiasm.  He’s the uber-fanboy and his joy for the show is infectious.  He throws just about every trick in the book at Breaking Bad, from jokes that both display and make fun of the conventions at play, to pop-culture references and mash-ups that are only tangentially, but hilariously, tied to the series. 

Allen does some great impressions, particularly of the male characters.  He’s got a knack for voices and a face made out of Play-Doh.  His Walt and Jessie Pinkman are spot on. While many others like Tuco or Hank are a bit broader, in each case Allen manages to capture something – a facial expression, a gesture, a posture, a vocal tic – that brings them to life. 

Allen even comments on Walter Jr, who is criminally underused in the series and gets his own special gag and callback. 

I wish that this extended to Allen’s treatment of Skylar.  His idea of humor for that character is limited to calling her a bitch a lot.  It is unclear whether this meant to be a critique, a lazy joke, or just an extension of the narrator Jessie’s opinion of his fellow character.  It is bad dramaturgy and wastes so many opportunities! 

As a performer, Allen seems mostly interested in riffing on Breaking Bad, rather than trying to faithfully re-produce it.  Sprinkled like chili flakes throughout the show are pop-culture references and mash-ups that neatly fill the breaks between seasons.  A rewrite of Miley Cyrus’s ‘Wrecking Ball’ as performed by the characters on the show has the entire room in stitches. 

There are places where the show feels overly-reliant on narration – end of season two in particular – which I think is due to some relatively weak non-character physical work.  The one-man fight scenes, another great opportunity for humor (exhibit a: Fight Club) are mostly undetailed.  They don’t really tell stories and don’t tie in to the sound cues particularly tightly.  And the conventions around props and costume pieces need a bit of work.

That said, this show is great for any fanboy or fangirl who is going through Breaking Bad withdrawal who needs just one more hit.

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The main thing I wonder about before seeing this NZ premiere of YouTube-sensation-cum-live-world-tour production, is how necessary will it be to have seen the hugely successful landmark HBO series to appreciate the gags?  Answer: very. 

The more you’ve seen, the more you’ll get, and if you don’t want to hear any of Miles Allen’s self-confessed 375 spoilers you will ideally have seen the entire five seasons. 

Fortunately for American parodist Miles Allen, that only narrows his market down to about half of everybody. A little slow to catch up, at the time of writing this I have seen only three and a half seasons.  With myriad references to other pop-cultural classics from – Disney’s Mad Hatter thru Rocky to Family Guy and seemingly inevitably, Bill Cosby – all included I’d say I get at least ninety percent of the wholly reference-reliant jokes, which seems like plenty. 

A huge factor in the entertainment value is the impressive range of deceptively masterful caricatures.  In particular – and also necessarily for this bold effort to fly – co-protagonists Walter White and Allen’s own favourite character Jesse Pinkman, as whom he narrates the ensuing sixty minute narrative sprint, are basically spot-on.  Hank, Saul and old mono-expression Mike are pitched quite brilliantly, and Walt Junior carries the funniest running gag derived from his largely ineffectual presence throughout most of the saga’s action.  

Others, notably Skylar and supervillain Gus Fring, are rendered in broader strokes: less accurate but still harnessing a certain distinctive essence.  Besides the impressionist-fest, Allen’s own good-natured, intrinsically twisted personality underpins his running commentary on the significance and/or concerning implications of various narrative points, the occasional plot hole, and how awesome Pinkman is the way he always says ‘bitch’.

Throw in some puns, a large projection screen for visual emphasis, a tea-trolley full of props and a stack of musical numbers, and leave to boil.  The pace remains rapid-fire throughout, barely pausing for breath; there’s so much ground to cover after all.  Some scenes take a full sixty seconds; elsewhere entire episodes are dealt to in five. 

As for spoilers, I copped a couple but I’m confident there’ll be plenty of surprises left when I finish the rest of the seasons. 

As much as Allen does leave out, the remaining distillation evokes a sufficiently effective sense that we really did just watch forty-five hours of gritty TV in sixty hilarious live minutes. 

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