Austin Harrison
The show begins with an entertaining “opening act” character Glossy Monroe who’s come all the way from New York where no one will hire him anymore. The character has great energy and warms us into the show with a gentle ribbing of your classic white-guy comedian at a comedy club. He’s misogynistic, unfunny and has no self-awareness. This character is an entertaining, albeit light satire which warms us into things nicely.
We’re then introduced to McCall herself who explains the show and makes it clear that she has no desire to make any statements about the world, challenge our views or any of that stuff. She’s here with the sole and explicit purpose to get us, the audience, to like her. She pulls out her “audience likeability reader” to get an initial reading and then we’re off.
The rest of the show alternates between McCall as herself sharing yarns and telling jokes- with occasional powerpoint accompaniment (operated by Lila Māhina Black)- and short bursts of character and sketch comedy to break things up. Highlights include “Ken the theatre security man” and an extended section about the David Bain murder trials which has us in fits of laughter.
McCall is at her best when she is in storytelling mode. She’s charismatic, engaging and responsive to what’s happening in the room. She looks like a performer who is totally at home on stage and truly invested in giving us a good time. She has the charm and attentiveness of a seasoned pro- skills she has honed through years of improvisation, and it shows. .
It’s the sketch elements of the show where I feel there is room to grow. McCall’s performance of them is great, but the content tends towards the generic and often lacks any real heightening of the action. Most sketches are longing for a punchline that never comes. In contrast to the McCall we adore spinning a yarn about their Dad, or their dating life- the sketch feels like a performer who is yet to find their voice. And fair dues, sketch is bloody hard, and this is (I believe) McCall’s debut hour in the Comedy Fest.
I also want to make mention of the audience interaction in the show. This is my little area of special interest, and having first come across McCall when she was a Court Jester in Ōtautahi over a decade ago- I was excited when she opened the show with some crowd work. Once she got going, her audience work was generous and fun with clear expectations set, but she got off to a rocky start.
It began with trying to find a couple in the room and upon stumbling into a couple on their second date, McCall (in persona as Glossy Monroe) shut them down as she was looking for “a more secure relationship than that”. She then assumed there was a hetero couple toward the back, only they weren’t and McCall got into a real tangle trying to pronounce an audience member's name.
It’s not the end of the world to get someone’s name wrong when it’s yelled across a theatre, and I admire McCall's honest and earnest attempts to get the person’s name correct. However, her attempts to get it right may have numbered up to 20 times throughout the show and it became deeply uncomfortable. The audience member themself made a quip about their name and said “it’s all good, you can move on” which was a polite way of telling the performer “I’m really not enjoying all this attention being on me anymore. Please get on with the show”. So a piece of advice for any performers doing audience interaction; the comfort of your audience is more important than your mission to “do it right”, and we should always be attentive to their needs first.
It was especially unfortunate that this happened right in the opening part of the show before audience rapport had been built, but when McCall eventually re-aligned back to the original couple, she hit her stride in no time and we were onside within minutes.
Toxic Shock Bimbo feels like the first show of a performer we’re going to see a lot more of, and I can’t wait to be in the audience again! McCall is utterly deserving of her Billy T nomination, and this reviewer is happy to say that, by the end of the show, I really truly do like Rhiannon McCall.
Toxic Shock Bimbo runs at BATS Theatre until Saturday 18 May. You can get your tickets through the BATS Website.