It’s Not Funny

It’s a risky title – and could prompt a one-word review.  Fortunately, Fiannah de Rue’s show is funny.  What isn’t funny (usually) is death.  This show is, she says, her response to the recent death of her beloved larrikin father, as in, ‘You have to laugh…’  There isn’t, in fact, a lot about her Dad in the show, although there is a running gag about his ashes and a brilliant sequence about the wake she organised and supervised to ensure that it stayed sad.  Watching her patrol the wake and remind people that they are not there for a good time is very funny.

A central element is the now defunct television show, Blue Heelers, of which Ms de Rue was an avid viewer.  She discusses Blue Heelers very seriously – which is, of course, funny – from the point of view of an eight-year-old girl.  Her Mum and Dad had split up and she made a family out of the Mount Thomas cops.  And she shows us how, as an eight-year-old girl, she would dance for her Mum and her Mum’s boyfriend, Kevin, of a Wednesday night – after Blue Heelers – because she had elected herself ‘the entertainer’.  This sequence is wonderful because she catches exactly an eight-year-old’s version of some cheesy jazz ballet moves: naïve, just clumsy enough, eager to please and unaware of the sexiness of those moves.  What Mum and Kevin, with other things on their minds, thought of this is not told – but we can imagine.  Director Hayley Tantau’s outside eye for detail has helped sharpen much reminiscence into comedy.

Not all of It’s Not Funny is as funny as this.  At times the show becomes perilously close to serious confessional, but Ms de Rue is still – or convincingly pretends to be - that eight-year-old ‘entertainer’ – and that’s her strength.  She’s keenly aware of her audience, but she’s also so very likeable, little girl vulnerable and with a mobile face that pulls us into her stories.  It’s all acting and this is a polished show; her years with the Improv Conspiracy have paid off and this is her show.

Michael Brindley