Comedy
by Neal Portenza
Noodle Lounge at Central: Laksa Lounge
28 Jan 2015
by Kate Prendergast

Dr Professor Neal Portenza proposes to autopsy comedy live on stage. He seems rather to amputate its body in all sections, then fling its fly-away limbs willy-nilly in about the audience. It is crude, transgressive, obscene and really quite entertaining; in a titillatingly traumatic kind of way.

To attempt an unavoidably imperfect précis, this interactive comedy involves various characters speaking in silly accents (the main incarnation sounding a great deal Kermit’s moronic uncle), a red beret, mild audience abuse with a flaccid ribbon, a stolen man-on-man, lips-on-lips kiss, gratuitous bag-snatching, an impossible mission, portrait painting, an enormous drug baggie (labelled DRUGS with black marker on the outside) and an opportunity to thwack the maniac before us with multicolour pool noodles.

‘Can we keep them?’ asked one audience member after the highly gratifying walloping had ceased. ‘Can you keep them?’ Portenza echoed, outraged. ‘What do you think this is, a Noodle Palace?’

The venue is indeed the Noodle Palace.

There is no doubt that the act is awful. It could hardly be more balls-up (or indeed balls-friendly, as an exceedingly short lab-coat and loose jocks made roundly clear). But drawing constant attention to the screwy, shambolic nature of the show works as its central shtick. Portenza apologizes constantly for forgetting props and botching his routines, hollering unabashed to ‘Nathan’, the average-joe techie  at the back to solicit advice and issue blame. The audience is also invited to rate each portion of show a score out of ten on a little dicky whiteboard on stage.

Honestly, it’s hard to tell whether the man is actually deranged or just playfully so. This acidic and volatile slipperiness between artifice and authenticity gutter-slides through the act in its entirety. From the very start, there is a cleverly staged uncertainty over ‘who is the real Neal Portenza?’ There is also the insoluble mystery over whether some intransigently rude hecklers were faux or genuine.

One such man— mocked for being an ‘arrogant reviewer’— I am almost certain was planted, calling out a repeated ‘FOUR!’; which whilst a low score on the Professor’s whiteboard, is a rather high one for the average reviewer. I suspect I and others like me were being primed.

Yet, like the rest of his smartly conceived mess of a performance, I also suspect this was a gag that was at once co-conspiratorial, mischievous and fatuously-meta sly.

I expect my bafflement with the doctor will never be fully overcome, nor my amusement ever fully understood.

Dr. Professor Neal Portenza will run at various venues until February 12.