Review – Stephen K Amos: What Does the K Stand for?
Coming from a theatre background, primarily in pantomime (don’t knock it ’til you’ve done it), I can appreciate that any performance with an audience participation aspect has an element of irregularity about it.
Some nights, you just aren’t very engaging, some nights the audience just refuses to be engaged, but some nights everything comes together perfectly. It’s fun to watch someone perform well, especially when everything seems to simply fall in to place around them.
Between a man from Frankston (complete with mullet), his partner (who is mistaken for European all the time, despite her father being from Italy), and a young couple named Emma and Emerson, Stephen K Amos had a front row he could have some fun with and, by god, did he ever.
Amos plays the part of the ‘outsider’ with his work, holding up aspects of Australian culture so we can all see the ridiculousness of it and have a good natured laugh at ourselves, and he does it very well. It is a little unusual to see an international comedian with a set so heavily localised to Australia, but he uses it to avoid the common problems faced by comedians from overseas, namely references to things we just don’t get way out here in Oz.
Coming back to the pantomime angle, a few times in the set a joke would fall flat and Amos easily twists that failure in to part of the set, giving the whole thing something of a collaborative feel that you wouldn’t expect in a venue of the Athenaeum’s size.
Stephen K Amos is clearly an experienced and skilled performer, which shouldn’t be a surprise given the regularity he appears in Gala performances and on Australian TV. His show is fun, well thought out, thoroughly engaging.
Amos is performing every night except Mondays until April 20th.