by Greg Larsen is broke. His card went on a McDonald’s trip just a few weeks before this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival. He is 41 years old. He has been playing a comedy for more than a decade. This is his last festival show. He’s done.
Geggy is his Swan song, a chaotic journey through the ups and downs of his career and the decisions that carried him out on this trip. For those who have followed Larsen’s career, this show is a pleasure and offers a fun insight into the chaos behind the scenes of the various projects in which it was involved. It includes a line -up of others who got through the racetrack with him, many of whom are pretty good for themselves, including Larsen’s early employee Sam Campbell.
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The show is a window in reality to work as a comedian, from open microphone gigs in poking pubs to glittering price nights and the various day jobs that take place in between. It is not a glamorous story – Centrelink payments are a recurring thread, as Larsen tries to make ends meet. The topic of the show is money when there is one. And the question of why Larsen has none.
Larsen was nominated for several awards in his career and won, including several prices on the MICF. In fact, gave was nominated for the coveted honor of the festival for the best show. And although he is clearly pleased to be nominated, there is hardly any feeling that it will change everything. Larsen has achieved various successes-prestigious awards, a leading role in an international TV show, highly paid corporate appearances-but after autumn after every high, and Larsen broke again.
Geggy is an insight into how critically underfunded the art industry in Australia is. Larsen speaks with bitterness about his various television appearances – not because it is not worth it, but because the salary checks rarely agreed to work. It is something that is familiar in the art or entertainment industry in Australia and has put together jobs to try to achieve rent payment.
While he is committed to landlords and managers of the company for their role in this cycle, he is not released. He admits that his brain is “full of piss” and that part of his financial situation is due to his own poor decision -making.
It is an important memory that the majority of the comics are a festival show a loss-making undertaking. Larsen is not the first to paint MICF as a slightly masochistic persecution. But among them is a passion to make people laugh and to deal with a community of others in the chaotic, joyful moments.
Although the show began that it has no time to build a relationship, Larsen’s swearing, breathtaking behavior has something that quickly brings the audience to the side. The show is an almost relentless flood of jokes with a little break for the breath. This pace does not even slow down for the darker parts of history, including several periods of suicidal thoughts, but Larsen tells his life with astonished mockery, which is both self -ironic and nostalgic.
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Larsen is an insured performer. This is not the show he wanted to stage at the festival. After the episode at McDonald’s, he rewritten his entire show. This could easily have leaded to something messy and self -pleasure, but instead it feels honest.
And even though he insists that Erny is his last show, it feels like Larsen still has things to say. From the thoughts to socialism to ruthless waste of his early work, he is at the best side when he allows the cracks to show and hug the rough edges. If this is his last show, he goes out with a bang. And if this is not the case, we hope that at least he will make some money with the next one.
