Comedy Review: Space Race and Dan Is Dead/I Am A Yeti, Basement

Space Race is a hilarious tale about a New Zealand moon expedition. Photo / Supplied

Two theatre shows on as part of the comedy festival this week - one about a yeti, the other about a Kiwi-built rocket ship - are both beautifully outlandish in their own right.

Space Race takes a laugh-a-minute look at New Zealand's race with "the Yanks" to get to the moon in 1969, whereas Dan Is Dead/I Am A Yeti is about a yeti who lives with newlyweds in an Avondale bedsit. Oh, and the yeti also knows Sir Edmund Hillary after meeting him on Mt Everest back in the day. But more on that silliness soon.

First up, Space Race stars Simon Ward - the guy from the Tower Insurance ads, among other things - as mechanic-cum-inventor Laurie Marshall, who sets about building a spaceship out of tractor parts, kitchen utensils and "corn beef grease".

Set in the small Manawatu town of Sanson, it also introduces us to bloke-about-town Phil Pickles and his bumbling mate Kev, who ridicule Laurie's spaceship in favour of championing Sanson's other big tourist attraction, namely "Manawatu's quaintest tram". But Laurie is made of bigger stuff and he builds his rocket.

While Ward is adorable, and later on quite tough for an unassuming inventor ("I don't take threats from Yanks," he bites), it is cast members Josephine Stewart-Tewhiu, Nic Sampson and Joseph Moore (the latter two also wrote the play) who anchor the show as they switch between multiple characters.

Although you might want to clock Sampson as the oafish Pickles, he's hilarious as CIA agent Chip Carter; Stewart-Tewhiu is brilliantly doddery as 92-year-old war veteran Percy and delightfully droll as Laurie's Nana ("You look like a tired little Maori"); and among Moore's best performances is his short turn as Sir Keith Holyoake, who pops in to urge Laurie to stick it to the Yanks.

Which makes Space Race a hilarious Kiwi-battler story, and a touching love story to boot.

Meanwhile, a love story of a more sordid variety unravels when actress (and co-writer of the show) Natalie Medlock - who also plays Jill on Shortland Street - dons a deliciously fluffy and soft white suit to become Yeti.

Medlock and fellow writer Dan Musgrove are known for their fruity comedies, including Christ Almighty, but this lark about Yeti (whose accent is like some sort of pidgin Asian language-meets-Borat with a lisp) and her flatmates Yvette (lovely but disillusioned) and Tom (a paunchy, painful and randy Star Wars addict) could be their most crazed yet.

Medlock's cheeky Yeti grin, which grows more conniving and sinister as the play goes on, is devilishly good, as is her accent, and then there's Yeti's visit to Winz ("Who would employ a Yeti?"), and Yvette's Dave Dobbyn sex fantasies (which soon become a reality when she cavorts with Dave on his superyacht after a wild night out with Yeti).

So yes, Dan Is Dead/I Am A Yeti is utterly ridiculous, but as my comedy-going sidekick put it, they pull it off. And they do it with snappy delivery, intense moments (at one point Tom gets so angry he breaks his Star Wars mobile, for Chewbacca's sake) and downright absurd fun.