Review: The List Operators

Abbott & Costello, Ren & Stimpy, Matt & Richard.

The List Operators
Starring: Matt Kelly and Richard Higgins
Appearing at: Melbourne Town Hall, for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival

Seven unexpected things in The List Operators:

1. Oversized, whole-head Chinese masks
2. Rock solid characterisations
3. Departures from rock solid characterisations
4. Fun activities while waiting in line
5. Advice on how to resist making sexual overtures to mature-aged film reviewers
6. Celebrity fruit puns
7. A ping-pong bat and ironing board finale

The List Operators is an absolute riot. It’s not easy getting an entire audience onside, but Matt Kelly and Richard Higgins created so much irresistible mayhem on stage that by the end the crowd filled their basement room with cheers.

Pitched from a theatre background, The List Operators is bursting with playful ideas, solid silliness, mock-seriousness, dynamic action, and warm interaction. Sure, a scene or two will be suspiciously familiar to those well-versed in theatresports, but when you’re swept up in the crackling pace of the show, who cares?

Kelly and Higgins are the List Operators, in that the show is tied together with off-kilter lists (the walls are also plastered with them, for bonus gags). Sticking to classic comedic roles – Kelly as guileless optimist and Higgins as supercilious crank – these consummate hams had the audience in their palms from the first awkward strains of their take on ‘Smooth Operator‘.

It’s a broad-ranging show; one minute you’ll be watching an extremely silly sketch and the next minute you’ll be watching an impossibly snooty deconstruction of it. Augmented by clownishly triggered sound effects and songs, they race through a variety of madcap scenes, willing the audience to jump aboard. Rather than the dread that usually accompanies ‘audience participation’, the fun Kelly and Higgins have is so infectious that every member was ready to join in when needed.

I do try to observe audience reactions at Comedy Festival shows – just in case I’m missing something, or they all are. Here we were as one, and when the lights came up and we filed out everyone was beaming from ear to ear. Maybe I’m over social and political satire. This kooky theatre of the absurd has been the most enjoyable show of the Comedy Festival so far.

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