Raybon Kan: Awesome $ecrets of Winning Thru £aziness*
Polson Higgs Comedy Club, XII Below Bar, Dunedin
17/03/2011 - 20/03/2011
Production Details
Tactical Laziness Connoisseur Raybon Kan shows how to achieve All Your Goals the E-Z Way!!!
$$$!!!!!
Get a Million Dollars! All at once! In a pile! In $1 coins!!!
Get Married! All at once! In a pile!
XXX!!!
Is your hammock strung too tight?
Your snooze button too rigid?
Can’t be bothered dialling pizza?
This Show Is For YOU!!!
WARNING: PowerPoint may offend.
Laziness has gotten a bad name and been blamed for everything. But there’s a new sheriff in town: Raybon Kan vows to clear the name of laziness, install laziness as a puppet dictator, and even get laziness put on the $20 bill.
Raybon’s new comedy show is the biography of laziness, revealing it as the leading force in human affairs, and that includes you. “If you think laziness is the villain, the call is coming from inside the house,” says Raybon, either (a) cryptically, (b) without meaning, or indeed, (c) with a skilful use of caller ID.
The show marks the first time Raybon uses slides for visual effect. “Pictures are worth quite a few words, I’m not sure of the exact exchange rate, but it’s heaps,” he says.
The show promises to show audiences how to harness laziness, as the ultimate renewable resource. “Laziness is like a solar generator, a giant beam of sunlight, shining from within you,” says Raybon, only more inappropriately.
RAYBON’S SHOW IS PART OF THE 2011 DUNEDIN FRINGE FESTIVAL.
Raybon Kan: Awesome $ecrets of Winning Thru £aziness*
*or What Would A Panda Do?
Polson Higgs Comedy Club at XII Below Bar
March 17-19, 7pm
March 20, 6pm
Bookings Thru Ticketdirect
1hr
A close-to perfect pre-dinner show
Review by Kate Morris 18th Mar 2011
I’m slightly wary of shows with titles that have symbols in place of letters. To me, the practice resembles the subject line of something I might find in my Gmail SPAM folder. Fortunately my wariness was unwarranted.
Raybon Kan is an immediately likeable performer and the fact that he is actually funny too, proves why he is one of New Zealand’s leading lights of the comedy circuit.
Awesome $ecrets of Winning Thru £aziness is a string of vignettes inspired either by Kan’s own experience or by what’s happening in the news. Sometimes his craft is so good that he is able to interweave the two.
To illustrate this, and without giving too much away, he does speak to the past week where strangers have approached him to voice their sympathies over what has happened in Japan and to inquire whether his parents are OK – leaving Kan to then carefully explain that he is in fact Chinese and grew up in Masterton… where his parents still live.
I primarily look for two things when I attend stand-up: laughter and moments of clarity – by the latter I mean presenting something in a new light. This show succeeds on both those levels, but in terms of an overall theme, the linkages between content are a bit tenuous at times.
Having read the Gavin Bertram article on Kan in this week’s D Scene, the subject of laziness is clearly something that inspired the show – after all it did warrant inclusion in the title. However it’s exploration on the night was patchy. Tangents turn more into themes of impatience or greed and aren’t convincingly brought back under the umbrella of laziness. But, as the comic himself is quick to tell us, this is a new show and he is trying out some material – so this is perhaps forgivable.
What he does choose to share with us is entertaining and it left the audience with a smile on their face, so in that respect and despite some cohesion issues, I’d describe it as a close-to perfect pre-dinner show and a nice unwind after a day in the office.
_______________________________
For more production details, click on the title above. Go to Home page to see other Reviews, recent Comments and Forum postings (under Chat Back), and News.
Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer
Comments