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Feast Festival Review: An Hour of Touching

This Feast Festival comedy skit show and cabaret is advertised as a smutty night of comedy, songs, sketches, drag and dancing.

Feast-AnHourOfTouchingPresented by the Feast Festival
Reviewed 27 November 2014

An Hour of Touching is advertised as a smutty night of comedy, songs, sketches, drag and dancing.

It sounds like a fun and ribald night out, but it doesn’t quite deliver what it promises. Many of the sketches fall completely flat, there is almost no dancing, and the little smut that exists is really just the use of naughty words, which lack any depth in the form of wit or irony.

The show is almost a cross between a television comedy skit show (think: Comedy Company) and a cabaret performance. It takes place on a bare and slightly untidy looking stage. The cabaret sections are not very good but there is some success in the skits, particularly the ones around Australian politics, Wagner’s Ring Cycle onion ring challenge and the song that confuses God with a dog.

However this type of fast paced skit comedy is difficult and needs highly skilled and versatile performers to make it work well, and this is where the problem really lies.

Thomas Murphy is often hard to understand in what is possibly a combination of poor diction, poor microphone technique and muddy audio. He provides some fairly basic piano but does not manage to make his part in the skits work.

Charles Dormer is a little more successful and does some terrific impersonations but the stand out in this production is Fran Giappani who looks absolutely stunning and has great comic timing. Giappani successfully holds sections of the show together that would have otherwise fallen completely flat.

It certainly wasn’t an hour of fun and an hour of play as promised, but there were moments where this show almost worked. With some rewriting, editing and tighter direction, An Hour of Touching could possibly be a very funny and enjoyable hour.

Reviewed by Ceri Horner
Twitter: @CeriHorner

Venue: Soul Box
Season: Until 29 November 2014
Duration: 60 minutes
Tickets: $20.00 – $25.00
Bookings: Book online through the Feast Festival website, or tickets at the door if not sold out.

The Feast Festival runs from 15 – 30 November 2014.

 

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