This is a dark, powerful, pathos-laden and hilarious performance. Bennett depicts his life less ordinary; from the rural setting of his upbringing on a south Australian pig farm through to his painful school days, describing how he outed himself to a bemused family as a comedian and navigating his audience through the tragic world of failed love. He paints the complex, fraught, and challenging relationship between father and son as this comedian struggles to connect with a humourless man whose puritanical Christian values mean even the most innocuous of knock knock jokes is met with objection. With the threat of death inexplicably hanging like a pendulum over this cursed family reconciliation seems perpetually out of reach.
You might mistake Bennett’s tales as fiction, so outrageous are the many wild and unfortunate events that besiege a single family but through Bennett’s evocative narration and attention to detail you know that it can’t be anything other than true. Bennett, in a furious episode of brutal honesty throws item after item out from that trunk of family secrets on to the stage, in the pursuit of understanding. The pain of disaster is healed through the power of laughter. There’s no mask here; this story is raw, original, deeply moving - and very, very funny.
Bennett is the patron saint of storytelling. He builds a scene thoroughly and methodically, guides you through many a twist, confides in you and somehow leaves you uplifted at the end. He is the master of contrast, delivering the second half of the tale in a pink furry bunny costume, the furrowed brow of concentration never lifting from his face for a moment.
There isn’t a word out of place in Bennett’s intense and captivating delivery. You’re enthralled to the very end. You can’t help feel like you’ve been part of something really special.
Get your hit of raw and real comedy at one of the most unique shows that the Fringe has on offer.
