Here Comes Everybody

John Paul Hussey is a ‘round’ man – totally bald head, round torso, strong, stocky legs – but he uses this body with grace, agility and expressiveness.  He’s a performer with presence; he commands the stage and he does so for close to 90 minutes, all by himself.  Well, not really by himself: and he is rarely ‘himself’ anyway.  Having a brief word with him afterward, I met a man I didn’t see on stage (a nice man I hasten to add), but that’s hardly surprising.  Instead, he crams his show with a series of characters – not all human – of which some recur, some are glimpsed for only a moment, but all are sharply differentiated and sharply caught, often with a touch of satire – sometimes gentle, sometimes cutting.  The audience can’t help a laugh as they recognise their Greek friend or the bogans at the footy or the woman at the park with the awful dog or whatever.

Mr Hussey begins by bounding onto his stage in a curly blonde wig and doing what looks like a victory lap.  It isn’t a victory lap – he’s actually being an Arabian horse - but it may as well be because he already has us, the audience – and he doesn’t let us go.  ‘This time’, because he has done (among other things) one-man shows before (Chocolate Monkey 2002, Spacemunki 2004, Love Monkey 2008) and won awards and rave reviews. 

This time, he tells us at the start that all the stories that will follow are not only new, but true, but like many works that begin with this claim of ‘true’, it doesn’t really matter: the stories might be factual, exaggerated or fabricated.  As long as they seem true and say something about our world now, we’re happy. 

This time, his characters include: Terry, the philosophical, indeed spiritual, English gym instructor (he’s possibly the strongest ‘character’), his appalling brother Darryn, drug dealer to the Australian Olympic team (we could have done with rather more of Darryn), but also Bedouin tribesmen, Mr Hussey’s linguist father, French Canadian ‘experimental’ filmmakers, a Maori make-up artist (more, please), three ticket inspectors (Muslim, Indian & Anglo), a Greek bloke, an Italian bloke, Mr Hussey’s best friends (one dies), ‘women of a certain age’ with dogs in a park, dogs themselves, including Mr Hussey’s small brown humping dog, Mu, a savage Shetland pony, Welsh penguins (why Welsh? Who knew?  Hilarious.), a factory foreman, Steve Irwin plus Manta ray, a department store Father Christmas and his prick-teaser Welsh (again) elves.  These spot-on impersonations come in no particular order, but Mr Hussey slides between them so skillfully that he never loses us.

Praise of his past shows applies equally well to Here Comes Everybody.  To quote: "…performance blending hilarious autobiography, lyrical fiction, speculative philosophy, psychoanalytical symbolism, pop and high culture references with cheap clowning...” Sunday Age.  Or, “…consummate comic character actor with a rubber face and a compact build that allows him to glide and prance around the stage like a dancer’  Herald Sun.  Or, “…a magnificent concoction of clown and menace.”  Australia Stage On Line.  I can’t argue with any of this, but I do have some small reservations.

As with any number of one-man shows not united by biography (e.g.The Bastard from the Bush – the Henry Lawson story – Mark Twain Tonight, The Belle of Amherst – Emily Dickinson) or an actual play for one actor (e.g. Krapp’s Last Tape), Here Comes Everybody is, if only on reflection, a somewhat random string of characters and subjects. 

In that sense, the show is a bit like high class stand-up at extended length.  After a bit of autobiography, we get (via ‘Terry’) a grab about the Tao, the Yin and the Yang that’s sort of profound but also funny… but then we segue to something else for no apparent reason, the transition succeeding because of Mr Hussey’s skill.  We always want to know ‘what next?’  Then we get a spirited demonstration of the difference between ‘intense’ and ‘full on’.  Later, a brief bit of audience participation when Mr Hussey asks direct questions of audience members.  (‘You, in the front row, are you in love?’)   Later still, off the stage and amidst the audience, he delivers some witty social commentary about users of Facebook.  And so on.

But, overall, if the whole is lesser than the sum of its parts, we still have a very good time.  Each time something recurs – for instance, references to the Tao, or intense versus full on – the audience loves it.  Set-up and pay-off – satisfying - you can’t beat it.

Secondly, there is light and shade in this show and my other very small reservation is that the ‘light’ works that bit better than the ‘shade’.  In the ‘light’, Mr Hussey makes his pointed points and we laugh and get the point.  When he talks to us about loss and grief, he comes right downstage and sits in a chair and becomes sincere – I think genuinely – and then things get a little solemn and much less pointed and the audience feels uncomfortable and maybe withdraws a little.  It isn’t that it’s sad; it’s the switch in tone and the move to describe emotion rather than show it.  Here the segue doesn’t work quite so well.

It’s hard to gauge the contribution of director and dramaturge Peta Hanrahan.  I’d reckon Mr Hussey ain’t easy to wrangle, so we can applaud her for that at the very least.  Shane Grant’s lights are simple but very effective.  Ben Grant’s sound is subtle but equally effective.  This is 90 minutes of intelligent observation and humour by a consummate performer.  (The Companion and I agreed that we’d like to see him do some Shakespeare – Falstaff perhaps.)  Is he intense?  Or full on?  See the show and find out the difference.  Recommended.

Michael Brindley