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Bec Hill Didn't Want to Play Your Stupid Game Anyway

 
Richard O'Brien Review by Richard O'Brien 3 Published: 29 Aug 2010 Show Dates: 31 Dec 1969-31 Dec 1969

It's easy to see where Australian comic Bec Hill is coming from in this set about refusing to conform to the pressures of adulthood. At its best, comedy can release the Ludic impulse in all of us, the sense of uninhibited fun that reminds us how it felt to be a child. Ironically, this show achieves that payoff only when it puts aside childish things; Hill's content or delivery isn’t overwhelmingly childish, but the repeated anecdotes of potential immaturity which I assume she would say are at its core fail to raise more than a chuckle.Where she particularly shines is in the use of visual aids, with a movable drawing of Johnny Depp's face and a series of deliberately amateurish sketches of famously fractious celebrity couples providing two of the show's most memorable moments. An advert she designs for a tampon company, complete with rousing music, also has to be seen to be believed.The problem with the young-at-heart stuff is that it's mostly too tame and uninventive to surprise, which children rarely are. Observations about her friends having children and her not feeling grown-up enough to care for one, for example, are already in Creative Commons. The jokes with more adult punchlines hit much harder, and say more with less. So it's not that Bec Hill needs to grow up, per se – it's that the best of her material is already sharp and knowing enough to have outgrown this redundant and occasionally restrictive framework.

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The Blurb:

This is a coming of age show. Don't laugh. 'Coming' is not a funny word.