Saturday 9th April 2016 - 8:15 pm
Queue outside along Swanston Street
The queue for Joel Creasey’s show was massively long, covering at least half a dozen shops along Swanston Street.
They also opened the doors late and as a consequence the show started late. Not too much of a concern as I had an hour between the end of Joel’s show and the next show I was seeing.
Celebrity.
That’s what Joel’s show should be called.
The show starts off a little weirdly with a highlights package of all the shows he’s been in.
I thought for a moment he was going to come out from the stage in some sort of performance piece when the two stage hands went out onto stage to draw back the curtains. But it was for the projection screen rather than anything amazingly interesting.
I don’t know whether this was to highlight Joel’s search for celebrity and fame or to illustrate to the audience who he was.
From what I could tell from the audience around me there were a lot of over 40 people seeing his show, which was a little bit odd.
There are 14 lights overhead and 10 folds in the curtains behind Joel Creasey, so I was definitely engrossed with the content.
I went to Creasey’s show because I’ve thoroughly enjoyed his shows in the past. But this show, just...it was a series of events in his life without a cohesive narrative structure to it.
I’m something of a fan of narrative comedy, so was hoping for something like his previous shows I’d seen in the past.
The show is mostly about celebrity and Joel’s search for it. There are plenty of funny moments throughout the show. Which are definitely enhanced if you’ve followed everything he’s done, which might explain the video summary at the start of the show, but there’s not enough context without the video to allow his stories to reference back to that video.
I’m not sure what I was expecting from Creasey’s show, something like the last two perhaps? I wasn’t really expecting it to be about gossip and celebrity, which in retrospect perhaps I should have. I knew there’d have to be some stuff related to that because of his involvement with ‘I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here’ along with Channel 10. But I guess I didn’t realise how much of a focus it would be.