Review: What would Bill Murray do?, MICF

David Tieck. Supplied.

First of all, let’s get the name out of the way. Invoking Bill Murray in your title leads your audience to assume that your act will somehow resemble the Hollywood actor’s drollness and dry wit in terms of performance, but sadly this is not to be the case.

David Tieck only uses the Murray credentials to harness his show’s attempt of instilling the actor’s philosophy of silliness and fun. But Tieck fails and fails astoundingly. Presenting lukewarm, quarter-baked observations may be his idea of ‘silly’ and ‘fun’ but the 45-minute of showtime during which he holds forth on the tiny stage evokes alternative words from this reviewer, namely: ‘excruciating’ and ‘inane’.

From the outset, Tieck presents himself as an oversized child raiding the dress up box. Think pink tutu, suspenders, panda headgear, and bunny ears. There is nothing wrong with visual comedy if done well but really, you need to work a bit harder than just throwing random items of colourful clothing around and expecting a laugh. Such a riot of mismatched items and accessories is meant of course, to be ‘fun’ and we are instructed to see ourselves as ‘beautiful’ as he is. We are also reminded that our insides are worthy of love, which inspires a poem to one’s spleen to the calibre of ‘my whole life, where have you been?’.

Preschooler humour in silly voices and hammy over-gesticulation that frankly insult the audience’s intellect ensues for the entire duration. It’s not just the poo and fart jokes, but absurdist rhyming songs: ‘half-cow, half-owl’ and embarrassing directions: ‘Everybody close your eyes and imagine what it’s like to be a bunny hopping around the living room’. There are also attempts to present 37 bits of stupid and yes you guess it, ‘fun’ nonsense, with the big, beardy and hairy Tieck twirling his tresses around in a lazy effort to summon up impressions of Jesus Christ, Santa Claus and Hagrid. Just when you think it can not get any more shambolic, there’s even a disclosure of the apparent meaning of life, an inclusion of breathtaking chutzpah considering the eventual lame revealing of such profound existential matters.

Disorganised and scattergun in its approach, the major problem with What would Bill Murray do? is that it’s not a single laugh funny. More likely to incite groans and watch-checking, it’s unworthy of performance to a paying audience, particularly those who are older than five years of age.