More comedians? This is no laughing matter
From left, Arj Barker, Caimh McDonnel and Rob Deering.
The global climate is changing. All the animals are soon going to be extinct. We’re going to run out of water. BP is poisoning large chunks of the US coast because we all want to drive around in cars. We keep knocking over trees to build more fabulous holiday homes that no one actually needs. The air will soon be unbreatheable. And it’s all our fault. Well, the last bit is mostly China’s fault, but the rest is ours. We should all feel desperately guilty.
That’s probably why we in Phuket keep going to this never-ending series of comedy routines performed by visiting stand-ups from all over the English-speaking world. We need cheering up sometimes.
There’s another lot landing here on June 22 (a Tuesday) for a one-night stand-up at the Mercure Hotel in Patong. This time the performers are:
Arj Barker, from San Francisco. You’ll be happy to hear that Arj doesn’t think global warming is our fault. It is, he has concluded, the fault of the sun: “After all, when you burn the toast, you don’t blame the bread, do you?” He has a point. Arj is very popular in Australia, where the Melbourne Age described him thus: “Barker is an intelligent, droll comic with a dark turn of thought and a fantastic, disturbing stage persona.”
A disturbing stage persona? Just what we need when we’re all feeling guilty about making a garbage dump of our only home, the Earth. A disturbing person trying to make us laugh.
Caimh McDonnell has, according to the blurb, “a gentle yet incisive humour [that] makes any audience feel involved whilst playing with their expectations – sucking them in with his chatty, playful stage presence before metaphorically slapping them in the face with an unexpected punchline.” Oh good.
We all need a bit of slapping. But why only metaphorical? After all, with what we’ve been doiung to the Earth and continue to do, we deserve a jolly good spanking. His name, apparently, is pronounced “Queeve”. He’s London Irish.
Rob Deering, according to The Independent newspaper, is “as sharp and versatile as a Swiss Army knife”. So he’s probably got one of those things for getting stones out of a horse’s hoof.
He is also multi-accented, able to converse like a native from (in alphabetical order) the American South, Australia, Bristol, California, Cockney land, Devon, Edinburgh, Eire, Glasgow, Liverpool, London (non-Cockney), Manchester, New York, Northern Ireland, Scotland, the West Country and Yorkshire. Aye, lad.
He’s performed solo at the Edinburgh Festival not once, but six times. They like him there. He accompanies his jokes with a guitar. If you want to know more, you’ll have to go and seew the show.
Note the change of venue from the Holiday Inn “due to unforeseen circumstances”, whatever that means.Tickets are B960 in advance of B1,200 on the door. You can buy the cheap ones at any of the Woody’s Sandwich Shoppes in Chalong, Cherng Talay or Patong, plus the Royal Phuket Marina Health Club, Angus O’Tools in Karon and Arfur O’Tools in Kata.
The “Comedy Bar” at the Mercure opens at 7pm, with the show dues to start an hour later. To find the Mercure, head down Rat-U-Thit 200 Pi Rd until you see the Hard Rock Café on your right. The Mercure is a few yards further, on the opposite side of the road. For more info, see the Comedy Club website.
If you won’t be able to make it to the show, you can still cheer yourself up by doing something good for the environment. For example, today, right now, you can help to slow the rising amounts of CO2 that are adding to the greenhouse effect, leading to global climate change. It’s simple.
Stop breathing.
