Presented by Paco Erhard
@ Austral Hotel – The Bunka
WEDNESDAY 14th March (until March 18)

This show is hilarious. My cheeks still hurt from laughing so much. Munich-born Paco Erhard certainly knows what will make an audience laugh. Which is no surprise, really, considering he’s lived for a number of years performing stand-up in the UK. If you think you’re going to see a beer-drinking, sausage loving, lederhosen wearing German portraying a perfect German stereotype, think again. In fact, apart from the beer-drinking, Erhard denies these traits are German at all.

Don’t be fooled by the title. As Erhard explains straightaway, he is not actually going to give us five steps to being German. Instead, he offers more of a guide to the experience of being German. This comedian is not afraid to say what everyone else is thinking. Hitler jokes crop up on numerous occasions. There is a mutual understanding from the very beginning between Erhard and the audience: if we are allowed to laugh at the Germans, we are to laugh at ourselves too. He has no shortage of jokes about the British and the Australians, and often uses cultural differences to highlight the (very funny) nature of German people. Erhard started touring his show in Britain and, as you’d expect, there were a lot of specifically British jokes left in the show. However, this worked in Erhard’s favour, as Australians love mocking the British. So while we laughed at ourselves, to make up for it we got to laugh at not only the Germans, but the British too.

Erhard actively involved the audience in his stand-up routine and had a good rapport with the audience members. He began the show by asking the audience which countries they were from, and then doing his best stereotype of each one. This allowed him to break the ice with the audience before he got into his routine, and it was impossible not to get caught up in Erhard’s performance. His theatrics made the show very dramatic as he used different voices and accents to represent different characters in the anecdotes he told. His facial expressions in particular turned a reasonably funny joke into something very entertaining. In one section, Erhard mimes out how a British check-out chick goes about her job. His facial expressions, while exaggerated, exactly matched the excessive boredom that accompanies such repetitive work (most check-out workers simply try hard not to show how they’re really feeling!).

Erhard looks right at home on stage. His performance never lags and it’s impossible to tell that he’s been doing the same show night after night. He approached the material as though it was the first time he’d ever performed the routine and everything was still fresh and funny to him. He used visual aids to help clarify points to the audience, and they too enabled him to take something a little strange or funny and turn it into something completely hilarious.

While Erhard tried to make the show as accessible as possible to everybody, and not just those who knew something of Germany or the culture, in some parts I felt the jokes got lost on some of the audience members because the cultural difference was so vast they couldn’t really understand what the big deal was about, although Erhard used local examples (such as New Zealand and Tasmania) to give the audience something to compare the German situation with. For example, Erhard gives two anecdotes about two different regions in Germany, Bavaria and Schweigen. I’ve been to Bavaria before and thought that part of the show was so true and so funny; yet when it came to Schweigen, I’ve never been there and never heard much about that part of Germany, so I couldn’t really appreciate what Erhard had to say. Even so, no one can be expected to get every joke in an hour long stand-up show, and, considering the title of the show, you’d have to expect to learn a thing or two about the country and the people.

5-Step Guide to Being German is a guaranteed good hour of stand-up comedy. Erhard was so relaxed onstage and with his interaction with the audience, and he never let his energy drop throughout the entire performance. This show is a must-see, and Erhard will smash some of your preconceived ideas about Germans, while wholeheartedly proving others.