No more performances
Posted September 22, 2018
The Birdmann comes from another universe. Well, actually, he comes from Australia, he has a real name and his brand of comedy is not off the wall, it’s off the map. With his hair slicked up into a spike and looking like a demented yet adorable woodpecker, Birdmann is profoundly silly – with the emphasis on profound. First he hits you with the great sadness of turtles, fish and dolphins dying from ingesting plastic bags floating in our oceans and then he juggles three well-used white plastic bags in a spoof on jugglers and juggling. He shares his lack of self-confidence and then shows us how he overcomes it by putting on such a teeny tiny jacket that his arms cannot be anything but raised over his head looking like a triumphant Olympic gold medal winner on the podium.
Have we dreamed of turning up in our workplace naked? Wouldn’t it be worse, he asks, if we turned up naked in our workplace but didn’t dream?
“We are, are we not, fantastic?” he asks.
If there’s a genre called existential comedy, The Birdmann invented it. “This is me”. Holding out a bar of soap, “This is a bar of soap. This is me. This is a bar of soap. It always lets you know the difference.” The loneliness of eating alone? He cuts up his dinner, goes to the supermarket and gives it away as “samples”.
I’m not sure Birdmann is an acquired taste. You either love him or you don’t get it. The packed house at his FINALE at Performance Works on September 21 got it. We played with balloons, we swooshed our hands like waves and carried aloft a big origami bird, we looked silly and we loved it; we whistled, we clapped, we stomped. We couldn’t get enough.
Once again, his sidekick was Egg – a strange, egglike creature on trumpet and keyboard who took the spotlight and sang a strange, forlorn little ditty, “Nothing Helps”.
The FINALE featured bits and pieces of earlier shows: getting into a gigantic balloon, eating/smearing a cupcake, pouring tea from a tiny teapot into his nose, juggling everything in sight, and everyone’s fave, Birdmann stripping down to his blue lamé bikinis briefs, putting on silver spike heels and doing his lip-synced interpretive dance to “If I Could Turn Back Time.”
OMG, I think I’ll have to buy his DVD and whenever I’m feeling down, take another look at it. Hey, don’t knock it; meditation or yoga might work for you but Birdmann works for me.
Existential comedy. Profoundly silly. He is, is he not, fantastic? Check him out at www.thebirdmann.com.au