Overview
Held at The Basement theatre on Wednesday night was Cori Gonzalez Macuer's opening show for the Auckland leg of his 2015 NZ International Comedy Festival performances. Entitled White Background, Confused Face, it was pitched as a look into the world of the comedian stereotype (hedonism, depression, unoriginal show names and standard poster designs).
It was a 10pm show at a relaxed venue, the laid back crowd reflected this, and the comedian himself, well he is non-chalant in every way imaginable. From the moment he stepped on stage Gonzalez Macuer had the audience in the palm of his unexcited Wellington hands.
The jokes come unexpectedly, often accidentally, and its as though he has no idea what part of his stories are actually funny. For the majority of the show it seemed as if Gonzalaz-Macuer couldn't say a single sentence without making at least a couple of crowd members cackle. One woman behind me let out several snort laughs, which Cori gave himself a well deserved pat on the back for.
Using a seriously and hilariously amateur Powerpoint, he began with a pie graph demonstrating the subjects that the hour-long performance would touch on, as well as a line graph providing a guideline for when the funnier parts of the show were likely to be. It was kind of half 3rd form social studies presentation, half stand-up comedy.
Subject matter included tips for appearing to be cool at a party where everyone is smoking weed, pointless stories of his time spent working at an office warehouse, the feeling of returning to NZ from a whirlwind trip in the USA to play a show at a bar in Howick on chicken parma night, and a joke about David Bain. The most animated Gonzalez-Macuer got was when talking about his hatred for TK from Shortland Street and his dislike of promo girls. It was an hour filled with constant self-deprecation, very little vocal expression, it was all over far too soon, and I would highly recommend going.