Larry Dean – Dodger | Lynott’s Lounge at Johnny Fox’s | Until 18th February | ★ ★ ★ ★
Scottish comedian Larry Dean returns for Fringe World with a brand-new show. Dean has been a regular visitor to our shores since we first met him back in 2016 and he’s delivered some great performances over the years.
His latest offering Dodger is a little looser than some of his previous outings, and at Wednesday night’s performance there were a few moments where he lost his place and had to take a moment to refer to his notes.
I absolutely adore Larry Dean’s sense of humour. I may be biased because both my parents are Scottish, and I was born in one of the most Scottish places on the planet – Whyalla. In the 1970’s the South Australian town was filled with immigrants from Glasgow who arrived to work in the shipyards, and it was a community filled with people wearing kilts, tossing cabers, dancing the seann triubhas and throwing a cèilidh.
Much of Dean’s show is filled with reminisces about his late grandmother whose final years were spent experiencing dementia, a mix of confusion leaving her unaware of ‘where’ she was much of the time and increasing unaware of ‘when’ she was.
For Larry Dean the silver lining of the experience was he got to find out about who is Nanny was in her youth as she recalled her past, which was maybe not as chaste as previously thought. It’s a lovely and endearing set of tales.
Early in the show the comedian launched into some audience interaction. He asked one of the friends I joined at the show what her name was. “Francessca” she answered back as they launched into a conversation. He began working his way down the row asking people what they did for a living, “Nothing much” replied the retired Francessca, “I make Burritos” another friend answered.
As he worked his way down the line I was perplexed. What should I answer if he asks me my profession? My mind was swirling, should I lie, should I say something vague, should I just assign myself a new job, I could be anything. I wouldn’t be the first to lie, my friend had started the fallacies that when she said her name was Francessca, for that was not her name.
But a part of brain was taken up with a conversion with myself. Did my friend change her name to Francesca and I just missed the memo, we hadn’t seen each other for quite a while. “Oh-no” I thought to myself, had her name always been Francesca, and I’ve been calling her the wrong name for the last eight years?
Swept up in a maelstrom of ponderings about how hard it is sometimes to remember people’s names, I hadn’t left time develop a new profession, and I found myself looking into Larry Dean’s eyes, which are by the way – very green. “I review comedy shows!” I proclaimed to his probing, hoping it wouldn’t throw him off his game.
Throughout the show Dean chats about his Brummie new boyfriend, and the comedy of their different accents. He shares his unusual childhood heroes, and riffs on his challenges fitting into the LGBTIQA+ scene, it’s harder when your favourite musical genre is heavy metal.
Dean also shares a recent life change. Like fellow comedians Hannah Gadsby, and Josh Thomas he’s been officially diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum and he talks comically about how this has changed his understanding of himself, and his interactions with others, and he finds a mountain of new material in the situation.
An hour with Larry Dean was filled with laughs and insights and is throroughly enjoyable.
See Larry Dean – Dodger until 18th February. For tickets and more information, head to fringeworld.com.au
Graeme Watson is an editor at OUTinPerth. He has a background in journalism, creative writing, dance, theatre, radio and film working as a performer, producer and writer. Graeme writes for a variety of publications and has been working as a reviewer since 1997.
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