Review – Comic Strip

The Garden of Unearthly Delights‘ successful explosion over the years into a weekend bogan haven ensures the continuation of late-night strip-shows and lazy, boozy stand-up that may make any fan of ‘the arts’ dread to ever enter. Comic Strip thankfully offered a lot more relief from these trends than its environment would have you think.

Started by opening act, strip-teaser Gypsy Wood and MC Asher Treleaven, Comic Strip goes through the motions of every other late-night, vaudeville-format show, but does so with a touch of knowing and class. With Gypsy Wood’s curation, the show retains a vintage-couture that gets lost in some other burlesque acts. The strip-teasers in ‘Comic Strip’ seemed genuinely from another era, without the contrivances of similar shows. And while Gordon Southern and Harley Breen were professional & entertaining as the guest comedians, they played second fiddle to guest strip-teasers Agent Lynch and Lada Redstar.

Credit really should go to Treleaven, as the show’s mouthpiece for helping the show gel this well. He’s an educated guy who’s clever solo shows maintain levels of contemporary political correctness almost unheard of in a lot of comedy. He’ll happily rip into the gathered garden gibbons, like so many other compromised entertainers, but without the nasty-child ego of other comedians. He pokes fun at the idea of this show to the point that the audience may be off-put, but helps celebrate the guests to the degree that the same audience get linked back in as participants

Marrying two of the biggest gluts in Fringe programming, comedy and burlesque, Comic Strip sums up almost the entirety of the festival in one package.