Is This Thing On? – Belvoir

Overview

Mismatched milk crates stand stoic under the spray-painted board which passes for a stage. A plastic sheet painted to resemble a brick wall sags dejectedly in front of the genuine article. On the far wall, Cleopatra seduces impassively, the Queen of the Nile spearheading a column of pokie machines. Location: purgatory? Incorrect. It’s comedy night at The Laugh Hurrah.

Is This Thing On? (written and directed by Zoe Coombs-Marr, with Kit Brookman as co-director) tracks the career of Brianna (Madeleine Benson, Genevieve Giuffre, Fiona Press, Susan Prior and Nat Randall), a comedian, from nervous teenager, riffling shakily through handwritten notes, to comedy stalwart, returning to the mic after a long stint away. Played by five different actors, the various Briannas weave in and out of each other’s stand-up sets, existing in the space as memories and ambitions when they’re not dishing out the goods.

Obviously comedy consumption is notoriously subjective — everybody needs their funny bones tickled from a slightly different angle to get the desired result. With that in mind, I was disappointed by this show. It felt messy, let down by a structure which didn’t nail its comedic or dramatic elements enough to create a potent mix of the two. Rather than subverting expectations the way a good joke does, the fairly straightforward plot periodically grinds to a halt until the requisite amount of stand-up has been performed before culminating in a hasty climax and a musical finale.

Though there is some good material in the script, very little of it is given room to breathe. Every punchline is so swamped by ‘shazams’, awkward pauses and explanations of the humour that there is virtually no opportunity to appreciate the jokes themselves. The Briannas’ heavily exaggerated delivery also means that the content often feels like a parody of the form rather than a celebration of it, making the laughs even harder to locate.

The show definitely has its moments — Giuffre finally answers the question that Stevie Nicks put to Rhiannon all those years ago in resounding style, and a woman in the crowd, asked for her profession on three separate occasions, finally makes the improbable jump from ‘semi-retired’ to ‘bricklayer’. Ultimately, however, good comedy is governed by two things: timing and structure, and it is these elements which Is This Thing On? feels like it fails to truly master.