From Aussie with laughs

Who: Carl Barron (Whatever Comes Next); Lawrence Leung, (Sucker)
Where: Comedy Chamber, Auckland Town Hall; The Playhouse Comedy Underground, Wallace Trust Gallery
When: Until Saturday, 7pm; 8.30pm
 
Carl Barron and Lawrence Leung are both Australian and couldn't be more different. Barron is a white, 40-something, uneducated former roofer and Leung is an Asian, 20-something, educated, former con artist.

Both take cultural stereotypes, turn them on their head and make them funny; both know how to charm an audience and both are performing very slick, festival-hardened shows as part of the New Zealand International Comedy Festival.

Barron delighted many with his segment in the televised gala performance, that included observational comedy about everything from koalas to body language to toilet humour.

His live show leaves out the koalas but keeps the toilet humour - although it's a gentle, thinking person's toilet humour.

At just over an hour, it flies by, full of one-liners, observational humour, a bit of bad piano playing and a smidgen of physical comedy.

It all hangs off an Aussie larrikin persona that has been polished to shine brighter than an opal.

They say that reviewing rock music is like dancing for architecture, so reviewing comedy must be just as pointless. And amateur retellings of professionals' jokes never sound as funny.

Barron has a friend who likes naming things that already have a name.

"Carl, I'm going to call it a night."

"It's already called that."

See what I mean?

Leung may be a con artist who tricks people out of their hard-earned savings, or maybe he's a medical-school dropout who is a terrible disappointment to his parents.

Either way, he is a funny guy with a practised eye for an audience.

His show combines storytelling, jokes and a video screen that relays in live action the coolest card tricks you've seen.

Leung exposes the tricks and cons he learnt from a 62-year-old professional liar, and the lessons in life he learned from his time as a grifter.

He is crap at accents and at times seems too eager to please, but this is a very clever and witty show.

Forget your dodgy relatives who want you to pick a card, Leung is the real deal.