Who: Tarun Mohanbhai - Tarun Talks Wedges and The Comediettes - Better Living.
Where and when: Limelight Laugh Lounge and Comedy Underground until Saturday.
Verdict: A little toilet humour is followed by a duo who get more laughs from their solo acts.
Tarun Mohanbhai begins with a roll call. Aitkens, Thomas, Holmes, Patel, Patel, Patel ... two pages of names and not one prompts a "present" from the audience. They had all noted themselves as quite definitely attending his opening night on an event posted to Facebook.
As well as descriptions of
his unfortunate disease, technology is a running thread of That Indian Guy's latest stand-up routine.
Prompted by a slideshow of images he has taken on his travels of Mt Wellington and the world, he joked about leaving messages on cellphones, driving with cellphones, Telecom's new logo and the reason he thinks it's quite ingenious.
He moved on to supermarkets, then smoking on planes using his simple anecdotes and images to point out the way logic fails on the basics. He offered suggestions for improving life - just putting the trolleys inside the entrance bars would help immensely.
There are fewer Indian jokes this year, even though they are clearly what the audience is after - the thick accents he did pull out had the room roaring. As someone who has performed a show called The Curry Muncher, taxi gags and dairy skits may seem a little predictable but they were also some of the most hilarious aspects of his routine.
For all those wondering where the wedges part of his title comes in, I advise turning a blind eye at the anatomical images he projects 45 minutes in. They are a bit gross. But they do indicate the toilet humour earlier was no word of a lie.
For something completely different I trotted across the road to see The Comediettes, a Wellington duo who dress in primary colours and use a small harp to mark the end of skits.
I dug my fingernails into the seat and braced myself for an awkward hour. They opened with a song - always a gamble - about cleaning and tea towels and jail, and blonde Sarah Harpur was smiling away like a stoner while stern red-head Jim Stanton (a girl) seemed miffed the audience didn't like cheese as much as she did.
Though it was quite scripted, they performed like two silly, giggly twenty-somethings who seemed unaware they were speaking into a microphone to a room full of people who were trying really hard to laugh. But their solo stand-up routines did spur hysterics - especially Stanton's extreme facial expressions and her description of a lavish hotel room and Harpur's naughty animal jokes.
Cats were given a bit of a banter-beating but the distasteful gags were better suited to the later-night crowd than were the "Better Living" domestic housewife references .
