Blake Everett is King of Nothing

Blake Everett is King of Nothing
Written & performed by Blake Everett. Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Tasma Terrace, 6 Parliament Place, Melbourne. 10-13 & 18-22 April 2017

Blake Everett is a shaggy, boofy guy in a Hawaiian shirt.  He opens his show with a jaunty, cocky song, ‘I’m Better Than You’.  He might be King of Nothing, but he’s better than us because he’s doing what he loves: he’s a comedian. 

But then he backs off from all that condescension and boasting.  He confesses humbly that was really a front for his low self-esteem.  That reversal sets the tone.  He keeps apologising for wisecracks that just sort of erupt out of his big frame - as if they’d just popped into his head and he couldn’t help himself.  His show might look like a bit of rambling, stop-start spontaneity, but he’s taking a cunning risk – even if he’s unaware that he is.  He takes the usual, practically cliché self-reflexive mode of stand-up and cabaret and pushes it to where it’s the point of the show.  

How?  Because he has an invaluable ability to be really, really offensive and yet keep the audience onside and liking him.  After all, he is very likeable - even when there’s a palpable subtext all through his routines of him begging the audience, ‘Please like me… even though I know I’ve just been really gross and crass – again…?’  For instance, he claims to have gone through puberty in the womb –  and given his Mum beard rash on her ‘flaps’ on the way out… Well, not ‘flaps’ - labia majora and minora to give ‘em their proper name… (On opening night, his Mum is in the audience.)  And those labia become a running gag – along with, later, dick jokes such as a list of what gives you an erection, but doesn’t turn you on…

He claims to be nineteen and you can see him performing like this for his mates – at school, at the pub, at the job he claims he’s never had… and causing offence but getting big laughs… and then backing off quickly to his unconvincing apologies.  He was – is – so good at these shocks followed by weasel word ‘regret’ that it confirms his sole ambition, formed at an early age: to be a comedian. 

Here, he teases, insults and embarrasses members of the audience (including his Mum) and then apologises with cheeky, grinning insincerity.  This quick, improvisational wit is actually the best stuff in his show – better than a lot of the stuff he’s scripted.  At one point he takes the big gamble of asking an audience member what he thought of that last (rather lame) joke.  After a fraught pause, the guy says, with Australian polite tact, ‘Um… Good.’  The expression on Mr Everett’s face is glorious: he knows.  Thanks, mate.

Such moments are much better than when he leaves the room in the middle of the show – oh, yes, he does – and the lights go out and the audience sits in total darkness listening to a pre-recorded four-minutes-but-only-one-joke audio tape.  Not a laugh to be heard even from Mum and her cheer squad.  I’d suggest that this interlude is maybe a mistake and a rethink might be a good idea.

His songs, on the other hand, are terrific.  Clever, unpredictable but wince-making rhymes, witty and surprising.  ‘21st Century Love’, a song about sexting, is insightful and satiric, given an even sharper edge by the mock pathos with which he sings.

All this is going on in a most elegant 19th century décor room – chandeliers, ceiling mouldings, gold flowered wall-paper – in Tasma Terrace, headquarters of the National Trust.  They have opened up this beautiful building to provide a number of intimate spaces for comedy shows.  Obviously, the contrast between the location and Mr Everett’s material is marked, but don’t let that deter you.

If he really is nineteen, that’s impressive.  It also means he’s got plenty of time to refine himself and his material.  He’s so… innocent (if that’s the word), self-deprecating, crass but sweet and engaging he could be an actor too; he could be another Shane Jacobson.  So. King of Nothing may be an uneven show, but Mr Everett could be a comedian to watch: he’s going to get better and better.

Michael Brindley

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