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Sydney Comedy Festival: MotherFather

Andrew Bell hopes this review doesn’t give him a reputation as a nice person.

by Honi Soit

May 8, 2013

MotherFather, the Cranston-Cup-champion-duo (and now also National Theatresports champions) of Tom Walker and Bridie Connell presented PartyDinner! last Friday night at the Factory Theatre.

There is a moment of suspense when any comedy act takes the stage, when the audience fears that the following hour will be filled with polite, not-wanting-to- hurt-their-feelings laughter. It took them two (maybe three, give or take) sentences for us to decide that that wasn’t going to be the case.

The show was fantastic. It built a momentum with an incredible range of improvised skits, with a solid mix of audience contribution. The show just came off as genuine: the best bits involved the little pauses where they weren’t sure what to say next, and came up with incredible saves. I won’t ruin them for you, because I’ll say (at the risk of sounding too impressed) that you should see them for yourself. Friday. Factory Theatre. $15. Go.

PartyDinner! $15 (Final Show) May 10th, Factory Theatre Marrickville

As National Theatresports champions, Tom and Bridie were awarded their very own title belt. According to Tom: “I don’t know how long we get to keep the title belt for, as it is literally held together by duct tape.”

“Basically it was a theatresports show (separate from the stuff we usually do, which is called longform: this is improvised “games” of 1-3 minutes that 5 judges then give ratings of 0-5, the stuff you’d see at Manning) for the title of Theatresports Champion of Australia. NSW hasn’t won since 2005.” Bridie and Tom were clear winners in front of a massive crowd at the Enmore theatre.

Tom says, “art is art and ranking it feels weird, but we were the funniest on the night and hopefully it’s something to make people who’ve only experienced improv through theatresports sit up and take notice.” So head along and catch them on Friday night, or at Project 52, every Wednesday night from 7:30 at Hermann’s.

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