The Classic
Review: David Lawrence
Some might have been offended when Michael Barrymore observed in his Auckland show last month that if you kick a Japanese hard enough in the backside you get a nip in the air. But not the two Japanese guys in this act, who began by thanking the United States for the bomb.
They've got every nippy, slant-eyed, karate-chopping, no-speak-Ingrish cliche in the tourist phrasebook.
In a series of comic/straightman routines and minimalist sketches using a handful of props, the duo ridiculed themselves, their country and anything Asian with a vehemence that indicated a severe case of cultural self-loathing.
The bowing tourist as a woodpecker ... sushi taken to extremes of freshness ... kung fu cooking (messy in the front row). All very manic with lots of high-pitched exclamatory squealing.
But the material was not quite as unconventional as the novel delivery made it seem, and certainly not as outrageous as some might have been hoping for. No horrifying mutilation or amazing feats of endurance in the physical comedy, I'm afraid, just simple slapstick.
