The critically acclaimed Doctor Brown took to the stage to perform eight back-to-back shows with each performance building upon the highlights of the previous, with the final show of the day featured the tried and tested material of the previous seven. The esteemed character comic Phil Burgers, who created this wacky role, was crowned winner of the Fosters Comedy Award last year for his show Doctor Brown: Befrdfgth. This was my first encounter with this mysterious character and although I was impressed by his mission, I was disappointed with the results.
Delivering eight hours of non-stop comedy is quite a feat and most comedians wouldn’t make the attempt. A rather sweaty Doctor Brown, half-dressed in a pair of boxers and a poncho, greeted us at the door. He then performed the first twenty minutes of the show in complete silence, pulling audience members up to the stage to dance with him. He performed various mimes with the audience, similar to The Boy With Tape On His Face, making one girl skip in the middle of an imaginary jump rope. One young girl looked rather terrified as she was asked to lie on top of Brown. She succumbed to it anyway but the ordeal was met with shocked laughter as it looked like they were miming sex.
When Brown broke the silence, he asked the audience what they felt like doing. The show featured sweaty hugs, using his poncho as a fan and an imaginary bus made up entirely of the audience. One moment which seemed rather odd was when Brown told the audience to imagine entering his butt-hole one at a time. It seemed that the purpose of this show was to see how far he could push the line.
Throughout this performance it seemed as if Brown didn’t quite know what to do. It was a young boy in the audience who received the biggest laugh when he poured a bottle of water over Brown’s head. Brown had asked the boy to play a game with him, attempting to walk from one side of the stage to the other in silence without making the audience laugh. Evidently this lasted for minutes, as the audience couldn’t stop chuckling each time the boy tried to take a new step.
Being present for the third show of the day meant that I have no clue how this madness ended in the grand finale. I hope it was better than the improvised material that I saw. Performing eight shows in one day is an amazing achievement, but I feel like Brown struggled to think of what to do.
