Robin Williams
A month ago, Tuesday 16th November, Joanne and I went and saw actor and comedy legend Robin Williams, perform his ‘Weapons Of Self Destruction’ stand-up show, at the massive Sydney Entertainment Centre, where he sold out 4 nights in row, we went to his last night, our first time seeing him live.
Tickets were close to $200, not cheap, and those were the lower priced tickets! But, after it was all over we felt we got value for money. He was excellent, an extremely funny and entertaining performance. He had us laughing non stop for his whole two hour show, laughing till we had tears in our eyes and pains in our side.
Keeping the energy level high his entire show, working his way through a wide range of topics, at a blistering pace, with some nods to his past film and TV work thrown in too. Never a dull second.
I’m really glad we decided to go see him. I struggle to find the right words every time I open my mouth, he didn’t slip up once the entire show. I guess he’s had many years and 100s of performances to perfect it.
He has certainly come a long way since the ‘Mork & Mindy’ TV show. I loved that show as a kid in the late 70’s, early 80s. I really like him in his more serious film roles, like ‘One Hour Photo’, and ‘Insomnia’, I’ve watched both of these again recently, great films.
Aussie lads The Umbilical Brothers doing warm up got some good laughs too, usually not a fan, but they had me laughing.
And now for something completely different… Slowing the pace right down…
Arj Barker
Arj Barker at the State Theatre, performing his ‘Let Me Do The Talking’ show, Tuesday 7th December.
I’ve seen him perform a few times now, he always brings the laughs, with his very laid back, slow-burn style comedy, with humorous observations on our use of technology, and on our on-line, social network connected lives. I love the way he pulls back the microphone and hits us with that radio announcer voice, for stats and facts.
He had some great digs at JB HiFi (how many there are, everywhere, and how you usually can’t walk out of one without buying anything), and he loves to pay out our Australian accent, I think he does it so well now, because he spends so much time. It’s interesting how he performs in the regional areas first before doing the cities each time he’s out here, gathering material I think.
Unfortunately this performance will be remembered mostly because of some idiot in the audience who heckled via a loud/long whistle a few times during the performance, Arj eventually stopped the show, demanding the guy was ejected before he would continue, which darkened things a bit, but brought a big cheer when the guy was actually ejected, and then the comedy continued. Not one of my fave, or the best Arj performances, but I had some great laughs. Think I laughed more at the older material he fell back on a few times, than the newer stuff.
A feature, and review of the same performance here:
http://www.timeoutsydney.com.au/comedy/event/20102/arj-barker.aspx
More data:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Williams
http://www.arjbarker.com
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More laughs coming up next year, seeing a couple of other legends of comedy: Weird Al Yankovic and Billy Connolly