The room is stinking hot, the audience packed in tight, and we’re all here to see Truly Friday: Before They Were Famous, an utterly new form of musical comedy – one with two dudes playing guitars and singing. Wellington’s never seen anything like that before…

Opening with a delightfully chaotic video (with all the purposeful editing of my Year Nine media studies assignments), featuring a handful of Wellington comedy cameos, the future famous members of Truly Friday appear to their present day selves warning them – Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure style – that if they complete their show tonight they’ll end up sad and working as solo acts. Or tradies. Or Scottish. Regardless, they forge on and parkour towards our venue at two/fiftyseven, scrabbling with the curtains on the video before stepping live into our audience to cheers and claps.

Both artists, Nathan (Roys) and Jackson (Herman), bring a genuine charisma to their performance, and I am thoroughly taken from the get-go in a way that I so rarely am with musical comedy. Songs about manic pixie dream girls, sexy serial killers and a world where Rippa Rugby players are celebrities leave the audience – and me – roaring with laughter, while other songs bring a hint of smut.

The audience is vibrant, and the performers responsive; there’s clearly many friends in the crowd, and diffusing good-natured catcalls with nothing more than a glare or a wink is clearly second nature to those on stage.

Roys and Herman are clever musicians with a talent for wordplay and a good grasp on chaos. Comedy shows that take a deep dive into the ludicrous are the ones that bring me the most joy, and Truly Friday has that in spades, though they never lose the audience amidst the insanity. We are rolled easily through a very hilarious hour-long work that mixes the absurd with the mundane and comes out with a sort of young Millennial energy – one that references NFTs but doesn’t quite get caught up in them.

I particularly enjoy a nostalgic American pop song, styled in the fashion of Stacy’s Mom, that takes a swift turn towards something a little more queer and a little more deep-seated, a la The Lonely Island’s Spring Break Anthem. That song? That’s one I’d like to see as a movie. In all, Truly Friday: Before They Were Famous is truly fantastic, and truly worth your patronage. I hope to see these guys much more often around the Wellington comedy scene in the future, because with their stage presence and their excellent musicality, they deserve the hype.  

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