Stella Graham is a Brit from Coventry who’s come to NZ to find out if she’s going to hell or not.

The main structure of the show revolves around something that her sister (the doctor, yeah that’s the one), said when she was young – that God has a book and gives you ticks or crosses for everything you do in life and then when you die your final destination is decided by the balance at the end: too many crosses = hell; too many ticks = heaven.

She enlists the help of ‘GOD’ – in this case a guy called John in the audience – to give her the thumbs up/down in gladiatorial style.

From the get-go Stella has a smooth and strong onstage presence, she captures the room with lovely positive energy – she is in control of her own destiny. As she runs through all of her experiences for GOD to judge she is an astute listener, often picking up her own turns of phrase for the comedy – when she swears saying Jesus Christ she stops herself and apologises to GOD.

A large number of laughs come easily from the puns she mines through the show. Coventry is where the now world famous woman who dumped the cat in the bin comes from to which she quips “she really misunderstood the term ‘cat litter’.” These are so artfully done they don’t appear planned and are fresh gems which make her very appealing, even at the sometimes break neck speed of delivery. 

Stella uses a laptop (was this a prerequisite for entry this year?) to deliver her versions of song lyrics to karaoke versions. Sugerbabes Overload becomes a tribute to sugar; Sixpence None the Richer’s Kiss Me becomes Fist Me, much to the disdain of one woman in the audience which becomes a good riff for Stella to work off, and return to through the rest of the act. (Was it my imagination or was everyone near the front English?)

Using images to illuminate her lyrics would have been better if it didn’t feel like she hadn’t finished the task – there are some great visuals but not enough.

Being British – well half British, half Sri Lankan – she has much material relating to her encounter with our places, language and people. She lets her one liners sink in, such as when questioning the role of Dick Smith in a world where we have lock smiths. The growth of the chuckle well worth the wait.

Towards the end we return to the laptop to play “What the fuck’s going on here???” She has taken pictures from the Karma Sutra, sections are blacked out which are then slowly revealed to be – something quite different to what you thought. The she rounds off with another song, as the basis for the ultimate good deed (go see the show if you want to know). She leaves the stage and the video tells us her ultimate fate. 

A good solid show from a polished performer, most of the time. While her material is funny, at times we arrive at the climax of a joke or anecdote as if there’s more to come. Like her songs, some of her material just seemed to stop rather than finish. This gave the show the feeling that once we got to cruising altitude it rather stayed the same level of funny.

The further on we got on, the less it seemed related to the structure of the ticks/crosses, but then suddenly she would ask for her judgment form GOD. So I did leave feeling a little like it hadn’t fulfilled the promise I had felt at the beginning of the show. However I must say I still had a good time. I felt that on the nights she’s flying she would be a great night out. 
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