Lawrence Leung - Beginning, Middle, End

The Quilt Room, Trades Hall, Melbourne 13th April 2012
Melbourne Comedy Festival 2012

The Beginning. It slightly unnerves me when a comedian simply says 'hello', and scores of over excited twenty-somethings burst into fits of giggles. I'm sure it's a Gen Y thing. They are so pumped and intent on having a good time, that the comedian and the material can be a bit irrelevant. So when Lawrence Leung came on stage twice before the start of his performance merely to say 'hello' and half the room were in raptures, it wasn't a good sign. And then it had the potential to go even further downhill when he proceeded to fire up a PowerPoint show on an overhead projector . Stand up comedy with a slide show? Maybe just a sign of the times, but that Generation Y (as in WHY?) have a lot to answer for.

The Middle. Thankfully it got better from there on in. The self proclaimed 'effeminate slender Asian man' had some good stories to tell and more than a few gut busting moments through the show (that's LOL to those gen Y gigglers behind us). In spite of him structuring his routine around the title Beginning, Middle, End, I never did quite get the flow and it was a little haphazard at times. However his sketch on myth-busting Colin Firth's god-like attractiveness to women, and the Toadfish fan fiction story were the highlights, and they couldn't have been delivered as effectively without the assistance of the afore mentioned and derided Powerpoint prop.

The End. The now scarily gaunt Toadfish (from Neighbours in case you didn't know) appeared in a video cameo with Lawrence in a homo-erotic skit, and although that's an image you probably shouldn't leave your audience with at the end of a show, it sort of worked as the End and left everyone happy.