Sunday 3rd April 2016 - 6:00 pm

‘Harsh’. That was a friend’s assessment of my thoughts after seeing Wil Anderson’s show "Fire At Wil".

I am and have been a great fan of Wil’s comedy, the first show I saw of his was in the late 90s or the early 2000s, I think it was the former. I’ve blogged about his previous shows in 2013, 2014 and 2015, and enjoyed them all. This was the first show that I exited feeling somewhat underwhelmed.

At one point during Wil’s show he says “this isn’t a TED talk”, but that’s what it seemed like at several points during his show. I’ve watched funnier TED talks than some of the content in Wil’s show.

For this show there didn’t seem to be an over-arching theme to the show, just ‘commentary on the world and events’. It seemed lacking some cohesion throughout the show compared to previous years.

There was some content I just didn’t connect with. It wasn’t directly the Adam Goodes content, but all of the AFL content I just did not get. I would go as far to say as I just don’t care enough about AFL to be aware about it. Context, I just did not have enough context for the commentary / jokes to work for me.

Tony Abbott and his downfall to Malcolm Turnbull was another topic that Wil covered during his show. For a lot of it, commenting on how good a subject Tony Abbott was for comedy purposes and how lacking Turnbull is as a subject for comedy. Abbott worked and did so many things that writing comedy concerning him and his political (and other) machinations was easy, so easy Wil comments he had two shows last year to take advantage of all the content.

A lot of Wil’s content seemed like it had been written last year, in response to things that happened last year. The Liberal spill that brought Malcolm Turnbull to the position of PM, the Barnaby Joyce vs Johnny Depp’s dogs, the Adam Goodes booing etc, it was all just stuff that seemed like stuff that was a little bit too much in the past.

Wil admits during the show that he’s a lefty, not something of a surprise. But what did feel like a surprise, unlike previous shows is that a lot of his content came across as preachy, and more TED talk than comedy show. I wouldn’t have made the connection had he not said it. And in some cases it was even more than a TED talk. TED talks offer insight, and I’m not sure I got that tonight.

I want to say I enjoyed the show, but some parts of the show just did not connect with me at all, at some points I found myself counting the speakers behind Wil and the lights above him (12 lights), and I considered at one point about just leaving. Not because I was offended, but just because I wasn’t enjoying myself. Yes there were funny parts, but there were also many parts where I didn’t laugh, but many parts of the audience did, so perhaps it just wasn’t working for me. Which I guess is part of comedy, that it doesn’t work for everyone consistently, laughter is a reaction, not something your can force.

I wanted to laugh, I wanted to enjoy this show, because I’ve liked Wil Anderson’s shows in the past, I listen to his podcasts (TOFOP, FOFOP, and Wilosophy), I have a ticket to the live TOFOP at the MICF. But as much as I wanted to enjoy this show, it didn’t quite work for me. I wouldn’t say I didn’t laugh, because I did, I just didn’t laugh nearly as consistently as everyone else in the room. It was a chuckle, at most of the humour in the show, rather than a ‘I can’t breathe from laughing’ sort of humour.

I think the other side of this is about price. Wil Anderson’s show is thus far the most expensive show I’ve purchased at the MICF at $54.33 ($45.58 for the ticket plus $8.75 ticketmaster fees). I think if the show had cost less I would not have as high expectations of a good laugh as I did. But because it was higher priced (yes, I acknowledge it was a Sunday and therefore that’s reflected in the price), but still I also acknowledge some of my disappointment is reflective of the price paid for the ticket.

I’ll still buy a ticket to his show next year and will continue to listen and support TOFOP/FOFOP etc, but his show this year just didn’t work for me.