Tom Gleeson: "Lighten Up",Civic Theatre, November 28
If there is a word for it, that technique that comedians use when they poke fun at the city they are performing in, then there must also be a name for what Tom Gleeson does. When he so effortlessly made fun of Newcastle at the Civic Theatre on Saturday night, it wasn't cliched or superficial. Gleeson aimed more truly and poked more artfully.
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He didn't joke about Nobby's or that our reserve is named Blackbutt. That fruit would have hung far too low for a wit so trained.
We instead witnessed something cleverer. We were made to laugh at jokes borne in a Salamander Bay lolly shop or on a drive past Kooragang Island. We were seduced into giggling at ourselves, having been taken to places that only we could understand.
Then when these stories evolved, imperceptibly, into brilliant satires delivered with Gleeson's spit-polished playfulness, Newcastle was never going to stand a chance.
"Of course the wind turbine on the way to Stockton was ripped down" he more or less said. "This is a coal town and they probably realised that they couldn't plug it into the wall".
He might have spent the last seven months at home in rural Victoria but it seemed, throughout this performance, as though Gleeson had been living over our back fence the entire time.
Regardless of where we are, this sense of familiarity he helps us feel is fundamental to what makes Gleeson such a beloved comic. He is hilarious to so many because he embodies so much of who we are. Polite but then mischievous. Genuine yet sarcastic. The public servant suspicious of authority and political correctness.
He might have spent the last seven months at home in rural Victoria but it seemed, throughout this performance, as though Gleeson had been living over our back fence the entire time.
Tom Gleeson is the witty, mildly irritated, inappropriate larrikin disguised as your every day bloke. He's the uncle at your family lunch who grabs another beer, says the wrong thing and refuses to apologise to those offended.
So please don't go on about the bushfires and the koalas. What about the bloody goannas? Celeste Barber? She's only here to make me look bad. And the firefighters? When are they going to do a charity night for me and all the other struggling comedians?
The beauty of this irony, of course, is that Gleeson isn't struggling at all.
Whether or not it's contrived or accidental, his regular Joe, I'm-just-like-you disguise has proved to be as seductive as it is convenient. The seemingly homespun genius of Gleeson is that he ceased to be an ordinary bloke many years ago.
When he's not hosting his own ABC television show, he travels the world and performs to thousands of fans. He might have us laughing at his beer and Bali bellies one minute, but in another he is illuminated by a spotlight, clutching his infamously acquired Gold Logie award. There are rules for us, he hints, and there are rules for Tom. And somehow, against our better instincts and our sense of fairness, even that is funny in its own, subversive way.
So when Tom Gleeson, the ordinary bloke, ignores speed limits and gets caught by the cops, he instantly evolves into Gleeson the celebrity.
So of course your children can bring weapons through Australian customs! You're that smart aleck from the telly, the authorities tell him as they, like the cops, let him off and wave him through.
And when we laugh at the absurdity of these moments we do so for the same reason we laugh at the man himself - he doesn't care much for the rules and, even better, his success is a perpetuating proof that it doesn't even matter.
Forgive me if it sounds trite and jingoistic, but that attitude and reality are unmistakably Australian. We know it when we see it and it's always easy to howl at.
The same can be said about his forthrightness, a quality and technique that Gleeson personifies and for which he has become notorious on television. He will serve you and scold you with a hard-baked honesty and then still make it seem like it's all your fault.
His commitment to frankness, to what he has so famously coined the "hard chat", was made most visible when Gleeson invited the audience on Saturday to audit his own honesty. "If you think anything I've said is untrue", he declared, "then ask me about it right now."
When a silly question arrived from somewhere in the audience, Gleeson barely attempted to disguise his annoyance. His answer to it, of course, was as quick as a whip and twice as stinging. The man won't suffer fools and we adored him for it.