Johnny Potts, our host for the evening sets the rules quite early.  The idea behind Sketch/Comedy 2 is pretty simple: while the comedians natter on at us, Hadley Donaldson will illustrate, supporting or undermining their jokes and stories as the whim takes him.  It’s all drawn live, like a stick-figure version of those RSA whiteboard videos.

Sometimes it is hard to know where to focus – the different performers address the illustration challenge differently.  I personally find the night most engaging when the performers, stand ups and illustrator alike, work together, directly acknowledging each other and their contributions. 

It’s a crowded and varied line-up, and it is clear that there’s lots of new stuff being trialled.  As a concept, it seems tricky to pair new material with an outside visual stimulus, resulting in some uneven performances.

Up first is the bro-tastic Patch Lambert.  His comedy mostly seems to involve telling stories where he calls women “bitches” a lot, so it kind of misses me, but holy cow, is he hitting the dudes in the audience. 

Rosie Cann comes next, and I kind of don’t know what to say.  I feel like watching her do comedy is like talking with her at a house party after everyone there has had two puffs too many on the communal joint.  It’s laid-back, meandering, enjoyable, and sometimes a little paranoid. 

Savanna Calton presents what feels like one of the most complete bits of the evening, talking about her experience with the condition of resting bitch face.  It’s great, poking fun at the way women’s faces are policed.  The images are so self-referential, though, that the drawings feel like a bit of let-down, overly-literal and hasty. 

At the start of the second half, Potts does an experiment that gets the entire room laughing.  He gets Donaldson to illustrate an audience member’s day touring Wellington.  The resulting list of Top 5 attractions, and a brutally honest admission that Wellington has the second best cable car in the world, gets illustrated with charm and flair.  This is the point where I feel like the give and take between illustrator and performer really gets going. 

Jim Stanton keeps it going with her initial challenge to the Donaldson to draw something coming from the palm of her hand held up to the screen.  The resulting jizz fountain is “the highlight of her comedy career.”  Her straightforward acknowledgment of the drawings and their impacts on her attention give us, as an audience, so much permission to acknowledge our responses.  This feels like a great collaboration happening.

Ricky Threlfo tells some fantastic domestic stories about his soda stream, but the last comedian, Brad Zimmerman wraps up the night with the first comedy that really wears its heart on its sleeve, telling a story about chicken and chips that is really about who gets to be a hero.

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