FUTURE SPLENDID
02/03/2016 - 05/03/2016
NZ Fringe Festival 2016 [reviewing supported by WCC]
Production Details
Last year’s NZ Fringe Festival Best Stand Up and Best Writing Award winner returns with his fifth NZ Fringe Festival comedy show in five years.
After three (THREE!) successful seasons of the really rather personal stand up show ‘LOOSE: A Private History of Booze & Iggy Pop 1996-2015’, FUTURE SPLENDID sees Jonny Potts putting the focus squarely back on the jokes. This is a comedy show designed to make the audience feel good, not wonder about the nature of existence or the passing of time (that one will be along shortly).
There will be music, games, self-deprecation and self-aggrandisement. The critics have used words like ‘hilarious’ and even ‘funny’ to describe Jonny’s stuff before so who the heck are you to disagree? Well, you are a person with your own point of view. It’s totally fair of you to disagree. But let’s do it in person because dammit we exist at the same time and that’s worth celebrating.
Some people may be put off by the relentless idealism and optimism of this approach. Please come anyway. It’s a koha show, so you can pay what you think it is worth. It may not be worth anything to you. That’s fine, but why would you NOT try this show?
Jonny Potts is the writer/ performer behind the NZ Fringe shows ‘Loose’, ‘The Kincaid Weekender’, ‘Signfeld & Freindz’ and ‘The No Nonsense Parenting Show’. He runs Newtown’s ‘The Blacklight Comedy Club’ and hosts ‘The Year of Reading Massively’ podcast. This Fringe Festival he is also MCing Hadley Donaldson’s ‘Sketch/Comedy’.
17 Tory Street
2 -5 March 2016 at 7pm
Koha
Part of the NZ Fringe Festival
Theatre , Solo ,
Apparently flippant with subtle undercurrents
Review by Shannon Friday 05th Mar 2016
Future Splendid is a whole bunch of ideas that Jonny Potts just couldn’t get out of his head. They are things that have no future. But they are also pretty entertaining, and most are pretty funny.
There’s something slightly Stephen Colbert like about Potts’ show. It’s not his character, the 90s throwback – excuse me, holdout. Potts is kind of slouchy, though he can certainly ramp up the pace for effect. And it isn’t the content, which is rarely political; he’s more focused on the form of comedy and everyday pretentions as his subject. The similarity is in their knowingness, slyness, perhaps even a little bit of a dickishness.
The theme running through everything Potts does is his need to undermine himself and the form he’s working with. The night starts with Potts being his own warm-up man. And before the main act – just to be clear, also Potts – comes on, warm-up Potts says he is going to mess with main act Potts and … he does, with an audience-bribing intervention that is especially endearing for his willingness to interrupt himself.
Potts is always pointing at the thing he’s doing more than he’s doing it. Like when he does the “To be or not to be” speech with comedy patter rhythm, or a long segment of half-baked jokes while holding up a “joke” sign. Or hosting the game show “Milk or No Milk” to prepare for his future career prospects.
In conclusion, I would just like to say, that despite its apparent flippancy, the show has a subtle yet undeniable undercurrent of nostalgia and confusion in the face of mortality, which is all the more effective for never being stated.
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