With the diverse platter of offerings at the Comedy Festival, it can sometimes be easy to get lulled into forgetting about the simple art of plain, old stand-up.
It's oddly refreshing to witness an hour of just no-nonsense joke-telling. No gimmicks. Just a microphone and a comedian.
The title of Guy Williams' 2018 show is 'I Wanna Hear What I Have to Say', and he makes that quite clear from the onset. Williams, a household name primarily through his role on Jono and Ben, is never short of an opinion on anything. Whether it's his thoughts on politics, New Zealand culture, racism, sexism or comedy itself – he has something to say.
Williams has never shied away from political discourse in the past, but his latest show is dedicated almost exclusively to it. He has experience, of course – he quit commercial radio in 2016 to invest more time in his political ventures, around the same time he met his partner, then-budding Green MP Golriz Ghahraman. As such, Williams is able to offer an amusing perspective on a range of subjects.
I think people often forget that even without the onscreen persona, Guy Williams is a very funny and very clever comedian. As he acknowledges in this show, those who have seen him exclusively as a light-weighted foil for Jono and Ben's pranks on TV may be surprised to see the sort of topics he deals with onstage.
