Presented by Angus Hodge
@ Gluttony – Funny Pork
SATURDAY 1oth March (until March 17)
The Amish. Mannequins. His dad’s iPhone. Adelaide Metro. MySpace. Hairdressers. Porn. He may lack a theme, but Angus Hodge is not short of topics.
Hodge is a local boy, hailing from the Barossa Valley. He got a foot into the comedy scene through the Melbourne Comedy Festival’s Class Clowns and has been going strong ever since. His show, Angus Hodge is Thematically Challenged, is brilliant. I saw it on a warm evening in Funny Pork, in Rymil Park. He drifted randomly from one topic to another, although he makes particular fun of Adelaide’s bus service. He built a rapport with the audience, despite being heckled, at one point, by a crying baby. While his jokes didn’t send tears of laughter cascading down my face, none fell flat and I chuckled the whole way through.
Angus has a quirky way of looking at the world, and it’s apparent in his jokes. Observational humour is one of his main weapons, and it works for him. He sees humour in things that most people just disregard, like mannequin nipples. It takes a strange mind to truly notice mannequin nipples.
Funny Pork is one of the smaller tents, and there is very little separation between stage and audience. Hodge made sure the separation was as small as possible: he made everyone sit up the front so he could engage with them. He enjoyed the interaction, and so did the audience.
His girlfriend’s parents happened to be watching the show that night, which he used to his advantage, and our amusement, by getting really awkward when delivering his porn-related jokes. There were some European tourists in the crowd as well, and he made jokes about Germany, which they appeared to enjoy (apparently the rest of Europe doesn’t particularly like Germany).
The fifty-minute show went by, as Hodge might have said, like an Adelaide bus while you’re waiting for it at a stop: too fast. I didn’t want the show to end. While I wasn’t laughed off my seat, I was entertained the whole way through. Angus Hodge may be thematically challenged, but he’s certainly not comedically challenged.
