Review: Paul Foot – Still Life

Fruity: there's careful thought behind Paul Foot's insanity.

Still Life
Starring: Paul Foot
Appearing at: Melbourne Town Hall, for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival

English comedian Paul Foot’s show is essentially about the experience of seeing a comedy show. He mines the awkward complicity between audience and performer, the discomforts of character comedy, and the rituals surrounding an introduction, a finale, and even applause.

There’s not much actual ‘material’. Some jokes, which Foot reads off decorated postcards, are reduced to their essences. Foot aptly calls them “glimpses” of comedy, as they suggest how humour can spring from surprisingly bleak situations or bizarre nonsequiturs. However, an extended riff on actor Pierce Brosnan running a sanctuary for cockerels was exquisitely funny.

Otherwise, Foot projects an air of barely suppressed mayhem: indulging in rambling explanations and tangents; repeatedly insulting his tech guy’s intelligence; clambering on audience members as his screechy, Little Britain-esque alter ego, the rather unfunny Penny; delegating his powers of speech to a magical hobby-horse.

The thing, though, is that Foot wants to create the impression of an anarchic environment. He begins with an unusually prolonged version of the comedian’s familiar offstage self-introduction, then roams the audience like a midday chat show host. Foot frames this as an over-enthusiastic miscalculation, but it’s quite deliberate. The bulk of the show is then framed as a run-through of the ‘actual’ show, complete with elaborate explanations of how each part will unfold.

I left the show feeling very impressed by the clever way Foot had pulled it all together – perhaps more impressed than I had been amused. His exuberance is disarming – dapper in his leather jacket, wingtips and Brian Eno hair, he’s inexplicably fond of trouser-straining lunging movements. But his show was so self-referential and structured that it drew attention to its own mechanisms in a way that didn’t really let me feel I’d ‘found’ it funny by myself.

What muted my enjoyment of this sharp-witted hour was a certain feeling of calculation. I laughed when Foot wanted laughter, clapped when he wanted applause, and felt embarrassed when he wanted to provoke. Foot had been in control of the show, and his audience, all along.

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