Well, THAT certainly wasn’t what I was expecting!  And thanks to Sam Simmons, my asthma has now flared back up from laughing so hard!

Not that I’m complaining.  The Comedy Fest is certainly there to give us a good wheeze and I’m pleased I took the punt on this, even if his publicity material suggested we were in for not much more than an absurd stand-up act.

If you’ve seen Tim & Eric’s Awesome Show! Great Job! or The Mighty Boosh you’ll have the beginnings of what to expect from this high-energy, prop laden hour of lunacy from a suburban Australian who may or may not be facing a midlife crisis right in front of us.  It doesn’t have quite the colour, 8-bit animations or poo-humour of the aforementioned TV shows, but Simmons peppers his eccentric viewpoint with nutty observations, awkwardly sexy gags and non sequiturs aplenty that would make those overseas shows blush. 

He’s already set up and lightly cajoling us in the foyer when we arrive, and on stage has a shopping trolley full of surprises to hurl at us, usually literally.  He hits us with some stupid trivia to get us warmed up, before launching into the show proper in a terrifically oddball introduction about a dream he had of a spaceman delivering a box of Old El Paso taco mix when he was a child. 

He’s dressed in a too-tight belly-revealing offensive tee shirt, short-shorts and stripey socks and the format of the hour is letters written to Sam from various people with various problems of various degrees of ridiculousness.  But that’s not all there is too it. 

There’s sublimely anarchic prop manipulation that produces much of the humour: from literal bread ‘loafers’ through an easel with bizarre – sometimes throw-away – intricately rendered comic drawings, to the crazy cardboard cut-out Viking trying to drink a hot chocolate on a mountain goat. 

And then there’s the soundscape.  It may all be too loudly mixed to balance off against Simmons amplified delivery in the Herald Theatre space and he has to ask for it to be turned up to match quite often, but the creation of this utterly lunatic universe would fall apart were it not for the integral sound design, so tightly woven and scripted around his reactions to what’s going on. 

The show is like a nervous breakdown, scripted, staged and performed to bring home the utter helplessness of a soul about to implode from the utter mundanity of urban existence.  It’s at times slightly ragey and didactic in its delivery, especially close to the end, but keeps its through-line (I can’t call it a narrative, because there isn’t one!) clear within the context of the whole piece.  Plus one of the most ridiculously profound pay-offs I’ve seen in a comedy show in ages – achieved using nothing but tacos smashed on his chest. 

(On opening night, the performance nearly fell off-the-rails as a set-up involving an unpleasant audience member was disrupted by them leaving.  Simmons brought the show to a grinding halt to explain this part of the evening to us and his intentions, but this just further reinforced his commitment and immensely quick wit.  That the audience member returned to his seat a few minutes later, further bought the house down and reinforced the surreal meta hilarity.) 

Brash, cartoonish, insane.  A battering-ram of absurdist surrealism to the face.

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