Review – Steen Raskopoulos: Bruce Springsteen Live in Concert!

What do you do if life dishes you an unusual name? You make comedy, of course. Steen Raskopoulos uses his famous quasi-namesake to frame an action packed hour of sketch hilarity.

Ever so loosely related to the backing track of a Bruce Springsteen medley, this is an hour of thinking person’s sketch comedy. Steen unpacks a horde of accents and lets loose a gamut of characters upon the audience; the next ever more unpredictable than the last. Steen deftly extracts humour from assumptions you make about various stereotypes. Punch lines sneak up on you from all angles throughout the show.

‘Live’ is certainly an apt qualifier for this show; Steen’s comedy fully incorporates the audience from start to finish; no row is left unturned. This immersive comedy is not for the shy and retiring among you.

The intimate venue is barely big enough to contain Steen’s agile and peripatetic characters, the entire room is his stage, and we are all merely players.  He leaps and twirls, making use of every available space in the room. Also some unavailable spaces.

But his show is not based merely on hyperbole or wacky characters; Steen underpins each sketch with adroit improvisation, sophisticated plot twists and ingenious call backs. His talents as an actor, a writer, and a comedian are all fully utilised in this vivacious time slot.

He performs to perennially sold-out shows in his home town of Sydney, though Melbourne hasn’t fully cottoned on to this gem just yet. Go see Steen Raskopoulos while he’s hot.