Review – String Theory

Andy Matthews is the thinking person’s comedian. If you’re anaerobic you’ll do well in Andy’s audience, as with all the laughing you won’t have much opportunity to breathe. Andy’s incisive wit is dialled to eleven in this show, with barely a word wasted in delivering clever, sharp, sculpted satire – I missed jokes because I was still busy recovering from the last one. He delivers witty blow after blow with a relatively dead-pan style; subtle yet searing puns and social commentary whizzing past your head.

The show is about string theory when it isn’t busy being about something else. String theory is the thread of a question that pops up in interludes between the farcical anecdotes, constantly being re-phrased, re-defined, and re-questioned, leaving us aware that the only thing clear about string theory is that it’s not clear what it is.

Andy will expect you to keep up as he hits you with a multi-level parody through word-perfect prose: a tale of survival encased within the language of the corporate finance world; a bush poem set in cyber space; a mockery of Melbourne couched in a voyage of discovery and more. We are launched without warning into the next comedic dimension, stragglers left behind. Andy dons genres, shows them off and discards them for the next like a dandy trying on hats. His extended anecdote about the intangibles concept market displayed a fluency in economics-speak employed purely for the purposes of comedy. A love story played out in rejection letters guaranteed hilarity. Please ensure you bring your combined art-science degree to this performance.

Andy’s near-victory in Raw Comedy National Finals this year was no accident – he is annoyingly good for someone so fresh to the scene. He’s my pick of the Fringe – see him now, just in case something happens and you don’t get a chance later.