Back after last year’s fantastic show, the Listies are just as wonderfully ridiculous as ever. Playing to a packed room of children, Matt Kelly and Rich Higgins are still two besties having a great time. They’re off on a road trip and they’re taking us along with them.
The Listies Make You LOL is that most perfect of children’s shows; a performance that the adults will enjoy too.
Their dynamic is a classic one; two friends, one more authoritarian, the other childlike getting into scrapes and confusions that delight the younger audience with their silliness and elicit genuine laughs from the adults. The centre piece of the show is a car trip that takes the audience on a scenic tour that, since the Listies are in the driving seat, goes quickly awry. The Listies are not afraid of the chaos that can come from audience participation; their natural comic timing and fearlessness to follow through on an ad-libbed joke even if they’re not sure where it might lead means that each show will have its own unique moments of magic.
Over the hour, a great deal happens. A live version of classic video game ‘Pong’ decides the power dynamic between parent and child for the rest of the school holidays, a pair of manky underpants are tossed around the room and we eventually find out why we all have something very much like a soft projectile stuffed under our seats.
The Listies Make You LOL is that most perfect of children’s shows; a performance that the adults will enjoy too. The jokes are juvenile and the punchlines often obvious but Matt and Rich are mining a rich vein and I LOL’d many times. At one point, after an ad-lib flies over the heads of the children and lands with only a few of the adults, Higgins drops a perfect aside, “It’s not all gold” he mutters. But it is; it’s all gold.
