Don't Bully Me! I'll become a Comedian
Fringe Bar, 26-32 Allen St, Te Aro, Wellington
27/02/2025 - 01/03/2025
Production Details
Created and performed by Keegan Thomas
Fresh from back-to-back critically acclaimed shows at the 2023 and 2024 NZ Fringe Festival, Keegan Thomas pulls no punches as he deep dives into his past. Learn how his formative years from first grade to finals and everything since have made him into one of the brightest up-and-coming comedians in New Zealand; with his brand-new work-in-progress hour: Don’t Bully Me! I’ll become a Comedian.
High energy, wild stories, genuine hilarity and unquestionable sincerity, this is not a show to be missed at this NZ Fringe Festival.
The Fringe Bar, Wellington
Thursday 27th February – Saturday 1st March 7.30 pm
Where: NZ Fringe Festival, The Fringe Bar, Wellington
Tickets: https://tickets.fringe.co.nz/event/446:6220/
$12.50 GA
$10.00 Concession
Stand-up comedy , Theatre , Comedy , Solo ,
1 hour
Despite WIP problems, well-worth the bargain ticket price
Review by James Redwood 28th Feb 2025
As Keegan Thomas tells us up-front, this is a work in progress. He tells us his life story with a slide show and some cued sound. There are strong joke ideas here and many of them are delivered with pinpoint timing. However, many more are not.
The audience is generous and supportive, and Thomas’s life story is funny and tragic. He is a young man, four years into his stand-up career. His stage presence is confident, the pace almost uniformly rapid. He has the stage skills to be an excellent stand-up.
Don’t Bully Me! I’ll Become a Comedian does take us to dark times for Thomas, with mental health being the main theme. As well as the, sadly, near-ubiquitous anxiety and depression, he also grapples with ADHD and other diagnoses. The writing here is good, he avoids “trauma-dumping”, as he puts it. We empathise and laugh. There is one rather ‘autism-spectrum’ heckle about Thomas’s real-life school ‘Fight Club’ video, which Thomas handles confidently, though he does not realise that you are more likely to die in a fight when boxing gloves are used. (I was not the heckler, but I am ASD – please forgive me.)
The ‘work-in-progress’ aspect is intrusive, however. Thomas refers to written notes for most of the performance, leading to re-starting bits, needing more light to read, and an unrehearsed re-delivery of two bits from his first comedy gig in 2019. While his skills and audience rapport mean he is able to carry this off in a humorous way – thanks also to a supportive, non-inebriated audience – the all-important comedic timing is missing for more than half of the show.
For those who suffer from tinnitus, ear plugs and a seat at the back are recommended for the opening audio. For those who are also partially deaf and/or over thirty (as most of the audience appears to be), you may struggle with some of the rapid delivery, and also some cultural references. FYI, The Lonely Island is a comedy band.
This is the opening night so I am sure the rest of Thomas’s Fringe season will improve, given his delivery skill and audience rapport. Despite problems this was well-worth the bargain ticket price. I would love to see him again.
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