The Cameron Blair Witch Project
23/05/2007 - 26/05/2007
The Transmission Room, Auckland
10/05/2007 - 12/05/2007
NZ International Comedy Festival 2007-09, 2013
Production Details
Cameron Blair
A psychic is telling you to laugh
Festival favourite Cameron Blair is back with a new show based around his successful TV psychic medium character that he premiered in the 2006 Festival. This year he promises to find new angles and laughs within the psychic medium genre, in a show featuring new material along with some of the best of 2006.
In the show Cameron takes on the character of a TV psychic medium – much like in Sky TV’s Crossing Over with John Edwards or TV One’s Sixth Sense with Colin Fry or TV3’s Dare to Believe staring New Zealand’s Jeanette Wilson – to produce humorous readings from the other side.
Now based in London, Cameron will be taking the show to a number of other prestigious comedy Festivals, including Edinburgh in August 2007.
Cameron began performing in early 2002, on the London comedy circuit. Since then he has made corporate and professional appearances in Scotland, Australia and New Zealand. Despite his very limited experience, in the August 2002 Edinburgh Fringe Festival he gained 3 and 4 star reviews from leading UK press.
On Cameron’s return to New Zealand in 2003, he quickly established himself as a regular at the Classic Comedy Bar at the top of Auckland’s Queen St and won a New Faces competition sponsored by ‘The Rock’ radio station. In 2004 he teamed up with two other comedians in a sell out show that won ‘Best Newcomer’ for the New Zealand International Comedy Festival. Cameron returned to the Festival in 2005 to perform in the sell out show “A Kiwi and a Tongan”. In 2007, his show “Cameron Blair – Gifted” was nominated for the Billy T Award.
AUCKLAND
Dates: Sat 5 & Thur 10 – Sat 12 May, 10pm
Venue: The Transmission Room, Cnr Mayoral Dr & Queen St, Auckland City
Tickets: Adults $20 Conc. $15 Groups 10+ $15
Bookings: Ticketek 0800 TICKETEK (0800 842 5385)
Show Duration: 1 hour
WELLINGTON
Dates: Wed 23 – Sat 26 May, 8.30pm
Venue: 101 @ Bodega
Tickets: Adults $15 Conc. $10 Groups 10+ $10
Bookings: Ticketek 0800 TICKETEK (0800 842 5385)
Show Duration: 1 hour
Theatre , Comedy , Solo ,
1 hr
Half okay
Review by Thomas LaHood 24th May 2007
The premise of this show, a spoof of celebrity psychics, is funny enough I suppose. But after half an hour of Blair pointing his finger and divining "I’ve got a feeling your birthdays tend to follow each other in roughly 12 month cycles" the humour becomes samey and dull. What is really surprising is that this is Blair’s second show in the same vein, bringing the phrase ‘One Trick Pony’ to mind.
Blair has the delivery down pat, with a perfectly blank ‘tell me I’m wrong’ stare as he works his way through the audience deducing obvious facts about their lives, and conversing with bogus spirit guides and dead family members. More elaborate forms of audience participation are a tarot reading, which falls a bit flat, and a display of psychic prowess which has audience members try to draw the same thing as Blair is drawing, without looking.
There are plenty of jokes throughout but even still they are thinly spread, often following the same structure to reach a similar punch line. Blair also calls for questions from the audience at numerous times during the set, but when he does get a bite he seems not really to know what to do with it and the results are limp, to say the least.
It’s a little bit character comedy and a little bit stand up, but doesn’t really access the best features of either. There isn’t much to ‘Cameron Blair, Psychic’ as a character, and nor is the material sharp or varied enough to keep us entertained. It’s a nice idea, and maybe with some more flair in characterisation it could genuinely sustain a full hour – or even two separate shows – but in its current form I lost interest about halfway through.
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