Jack McGee
One of the standout stories of last year's Skuxx Deluxe, was how Keegan Thomas started a fight club as a high schooler. It’s the kind of story you’d overhear at a party and get enraptured by, the perfect blend of self depreciation and unfortunate - yet fully believable - progressions.
This story returns here, in the final minutes of Thomas’s debut stand-up hour Boy Band Brain, and despite it having been a year since I last heard it, I sink right back in. I remember the beats, I feel like I can tell which asides are new, what he’s tweaked, and I’m delighted when he gets to the end of the story and there’s an update. One of the teenagers involved in the club grew up to be a professional martial artist, and was later caught running a fight club. It was not a story in need of a punchline, and yet life handed Thomas this on a plate. It’s that kind of just-the-right-amount-of-unbelievable feeling that makes comedy feel magic, electric serendipity.
It’s my third year reviewing Thomas, and it’s a thrill to witness a seminal moment in his career - the opening night of his debut solo hour. Comedy Fest. Best Foods Mayo. The only thing separating him and a 7 Days regular is the size of the stage he’s performing on. This is the make or break for any comic. Can you pull off an hour on stage, suit and tie, microphone in hand?
Yes, Thomas can. Which is a relief. None of his energy or sincerity has been lost in his jump to the big stage, or drowned out by the (presumingly) overwhelming nerves. He adapts to the form, and makes it out alive. It’s invigorating to see. There’s something equally invigorating about the fact that he still has a long way left to go.
I’ve always struggled with Thomas’s tendency to oversalt material. His mind works quick, and he tends to stumble into a million little interjections on his way to the end of his story. Some of these are thrilling, shocking bursts of humour that jolt you up in your seat. Most of them aren’t. Thomas’s anecdotes generally speak for themselves. They’re funny without the salt. The biggest opportunity I see for Thomas is growing to feel fully comfortable in those stories, and filtering the interjections so only the best of them make it through. I’m not stating this like it’s an easy task - it’s editing a script while delivering it in real time - but I’m yet to see Thomas hit his ceiling so it seems reasonable to assume that sooner or later, he’s going to nail this as well.
Thomas is really excited in the second half of the show when he starts hitting callbacks. He lets us know this, and as a result, ends up oversalting these payoffs as well. Boy Band Brain feels like a first hour. It’s got some fun circular notes, but it doesn’t feel tightly woven yet, not by a long shot. There’s a whole new macro landscape to play with here that Thomas has only just started to dip his feet into
I will note that the central idea of the boy band brain and the way that Thomas contextualises it is nothing short of beautiful. There’s an emotional honesty here about the bizarre ways we all find to make sense of ourselves and deal with our more idiosyncratic problems, and I find it heartwarming. The punctuation of the moment unfortunately ends up leaving a little to be desired, as Thomas ends up running over time and having to rush to the end, but I doubt this will be a problem for future audiences this season. The reality of viewing comedy is that the show I see is likely far less polished than the show that people will catch on Saturday night, and it’s worth acknowledging that.
On a more nitpicky note, I find some of the comedic crutches that Thomas has pretty overplayed. Comedy is a matter of taste, I’m not here to police Thomas or question his morality, but I'm over jokes involving the phrase “crackhead”, or that reference being on/looking like you’re on meth. This isn’t to say that all of Thomas’s drug related humour whiffs, a gag about Coeliac Disease and MDMA is a real standout, but there’s many a drug related aside that feels lazy and a bit cheap.
To shift modes into review-as-history-book, this was a special night for Thomas, not just because of it being a career milestone, but it also marked his reuniting with a favourite audience member. The woman in this clip returned to see Thomas for a second time, this time bringing her friends, and the moment when he realises it’s her is joyous and very sweet. While the moment isn’t particularly funny to me as I haven’t seen the earlier incident, Thomas’s reaction makes it worthwhile. It feels like I’m witnessing the gears in his head whirring, and next year he’ll tell about it in his second comedy hour. When he does, I’ll get the full meaning, I’ll process the magic of it, and I’ll get to feel it hit me how it hit him. I’m sceptical that any event in life is inherently funny. I think it takes an artist to make it so.
It’s my third year reviewing Thomas, and it’s a thrill to witness a seminal moment in his career - the opening night of his debut solo hour. Comedy Fest. Best Foods Mayo. The only thing separating him and a 7 Days regular is the size of the stage he’s performing on. This is the make or break for any comic. Can you pull off an hour on stage, suit and tie, microphone in hand?
Yes, Thomas can. Which is a relief. None of his energy or sincerity has been lost in his jump to the big stage, or drowned out by the (presumingly) overwhelming nerves. He adapts to the form, and makes it out alive. It’s invigorating to see. There’s something equally invigorating about the fact that he still has a long way left to go.
I’ve always struggled with Thomas’s tendency to oversalt material. His mind works quick, and he tends to stumble into a million little interjections on his way to the end of his story. Some of these are thrilling, shocking bursts of humour that jolt you up in your seat. Most of them aren’t. Thomas’s anecdotes generally speak for themselves. They’re funny without the salt. The biggest opportunity I see for Thomas is growing to feel fully comfortable in those stories, and filtering the interjections so only the best of them make it through. I’m not stating this like it’s an easy task - it’s editing a script while delivering it in real time - but I’m yet to see Thomas hit his ceiling so it seems reasonable to assume that sooner or later, he’s going to nail this as well.
Thomas is really excited in the second half of the show when he starts hitting callbacks. He lets us know this, and as a result, ends up oversalting these payoffs as well. Boy Band Brain feels like a first hour. It’s got some fun circular notes, but it doesn’t feel tightly woven yet, not by a long shot. There’s a whole new macro landscape to play with here that Thomas has only just started to dip his feet into
I will note that the central idea of the boy band brain and the way that Thomas contextualises it is nothing short of beautiful. There’s an emotional honesty here about the bizarre ways we all find to make sense of ourselves and deal with our more idiosyncratic problems, and I find it heartwarming. The punctuation of the moment unfortunately ends up leaving a little to be desired, as Thomas ends up running over time and having to rush to the end, but I doubt this will be a problem for future audiences this season. The reality of viewing comedy is that the show I see is likely far less polished than the show that people will catch on Saturday night, and it’s worth acknowledging that.
On a more nitpicky note, I find some of the comedic crutches that Thomas has pretty overplayed. Comedy is a matter of taste, I’m not here to police Thomas or question his morality, but I'm over jokes involving the phrase “crackhead”, or that reference being on/looking like you’re on meth. This isn’t to say that all of Thomas’s drug related humour whiffs, a gag about Coeliac Disease and MDMA is a real standout, but there’s many a drug related aside that feels lazy and a bit cheap.
To shift modes into review-as-history-book, this was a special night for Thomas, not just because of it being a career milestone, but it also marked his reuniting with a favourite audience member. The woman in this clip returned to see Thomas for a second time, this time bringing her friends, and the moment when he realises it’s her is joyous and very sweet. While the moment isn’t particularly funny to me as I haven’t seen the earlier incident, Thomas’s reaction makes it worthwhile. It feels like I’m witnessing the gears in his head whirring, and next year he’ll tell about it in his second comedy hour. When he does, I’ll get the full meaning, I’ll process the magic of it, and I’ll get to feel it hit me how it hit him. I’m sceptical that any event in life is inherently funny. I think it takes an artist to make it so.
| Jack McGee is a Te-Whanganui-a-Tara based playwright and theatre maker. Some of his notable works include Boys and the Silent School Disco, Edit the Sad Parts, and Music Sounds Better Out Here. He works regularly with Squash Co. Arts Collective where he is a co-director, and is in no way related to Greg McGee. |  |