PickUp: Sex Is Funny | Fair Ground at ibis Perth | til 16th Feb | ★ ★ ★
Alia and Colin are a confident and talented duo. This is a show of original songs, written, sung and played by the couple.
This show had its moments. Alia rocks her ukulele like a true rock n roll star. And yes, I really do mean rock n roll. I was thoroughly entertained by a song in which they both called out all the names for penis and vagina they could come up with. They skilfully included the audience in this song without embarrassing anyone.
However, overall the show fell short of expectations. I thought it would be funnier. I was surprised when they mentioned onstage that it was last year’s show. I had the idea early on that it may still be in early development stage, working out what jokes worked and what didn’t, still in need of refinement. I probably would have enjoyed the show more if I wasn’t expecting to see a comedy show.
Luckily, they had the experience and confidence to keep up their high energy performance in spite of the obvious efforts they had to put in to get audience response and participation. It wasn’t awkward to watch. These two have talent. They can sing, they can write music and they can play well.
There’s so much scope with the topic, sex is funny. They’ve written a slew of songs around the subject. However, there seemed to be some songs tacked on closer to the end of the show that didn’t really fit the theme as well. Spruiking during the show, we learned they’ve brought a total of four shows with them for the three weeks they’re here. I suspect they may have attempted to show some of their newer material in order to garner interest for the other shows they’ve brought to the Fringe Festival. Hopefully their newer shows are more well rounded.
PickUp: Sex Is Funny is running Thursday through Sunday until Saturday 16th February. Tickets and more info available from Fringe World.
Halimah Halse
