Review: Goth V Nerd: Disenchantment Lane

Lisa-Skye Ioannidis is the goth; Nick Rasche is the nerd.

Goth V Nerd: Disenchantment Lane
Starring: Lisa-Skye Ioannidis and Nick Rasche
Appearing at: Pony, Melbourne, for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival

This promised to be an interesting smackdown. Would Lisa the goth intimidate Nick the nerd with her immaculate eyeshadow, putting his tracky dacks and humorous slogan T-shirts to shame? Or would Nick get +10 laughs while Lisa glared severely and did the “gothic two-step”?

But their 75-minute show is more of a split bill than a two-hander, with each comic performing a solo routine. Rasche does traditional anecdotal stand-up, while Ioannidis is more structured and theatrical.

In many respects, this is a smart way to do independent comedy – spreading the financial risk of a solo show and doubling your audience – but you need to read the fine print to work out what you’re in store for, which might disenchant audiences expecting more interaction. While I appreciate that integrating their separate material would have been much more time-consuming, I can’t help but feel Rasche and Ioannidis could have enriched each other’s routines: Ioannidis providing a wicked spark to Rasche’s mild-mannered demeanour, and Rasche adding a wry pop-cultural tinge to Ioannidis’s everyday observations.

The affable Rasche begins winningly with the moment he realised his life was at rock bottom: when friends asked him to play a homeless person in their band’s music video… wearing his ordinary clothes. But he is far less interested in exploring the well-worn pop-cultural tropes of nerddom (Star Wars appreciation; internet jokes; role-playing games) or the social awkwardness of being a nerd than in taking us on a journey through the various ways in which people find meaning in life, such as religion, celebrity culture and music.

To be honest, it wasn’t that nerdy. Again, this may confuse audiences. A better description than “nerd” might be “lost soul”. Early in the show Rasche promises to distract from confronting topics with pictures of his cute puppy, but it’s just not necessary – the jokes are pretty tame, and there’s enough of a cute, puppyish quality to Rasche’s own stage persona. He’s leisurely and observational rather than cruelly satirical, and his jokes were more of the ‘smiles and chuckles’ than the ‘laugh-out-loud’ variety. That said, I enjoyed Rasche’s personal hierarchy of bearded men (“Santa Claus, then Bill Oddie, and then Jesus”) and his observation that if aliens with only a sketchy knowledge of human beings ever wanted to create one, it might look a lot like Roy Orbison.

Ioannidis has a sparkier and more confident stage presence; she moves between flirtatious giggles and fierce, microphone-disregarding shouts. Despite her impressively lustrous black hair, her outfit and her chunky goth boots, her material covers a far larger terrain than simply goth. She organises the aspects of her life using the letter G: “girly”, “gym” and “Greek grandmother” as well as the titular “goth”.

The ‘girly’ part was weakest, and the ‘gym’ segment had a nice moment in which Ioannidis’s personal trainer wonders why she isn’t losing weight. Her very funny PowerPoint presentation was strongest on goth – a segment on the cliches of goth music was simply priceless. But the real goldmine was Ioannidis’s material about her yiayia, with whom she lives. Ioannidis brilliantly evokes their domestic quirks and passive-aggressive interactions; there’s potential for an entire show here.

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