Comedy Festival - Peter Berner

I went to the comedy festival to see Peter Berner with my friends Adrian, Charles, Harinder and Justin. Our first choice was to see Ed Byrne (great reviews and preview video) or Adam Hills (of Spicks and Specks fame and good reviews) but they were sold out. So "we" (not me) chose to see Peter Berner (of Einstein Factor fame) instead. There is a reason why his show was still available last minute, it wasn't that good.

We had arrived 15 minutes late to a one hour show due to some organisational problems and the obvious parking problems, made worse by some organisational problem. I'm not laying blame, but you know who you are Mr Organiser hehehe. Regardless of how fast you drive, Murphy's Law always dictates that you cannot make up time from leaving late, something else will delay you.

So we got to Victoria Hotel and quickly got our tickets that we already paid for so couldn't not watch the show. We walked down to the room and initally when we first entered, I said in my mind "Oh no". All I saw were rows and rows of empty seats. I thought we might be the only people there. Luckily as we entered the room a bit more, I could see that the front half of the room was at least sort of filled. We took our seats at the back and began to watch.

Initially I didn't really get the jokes since they were related to what he said earlier I assume. So I thought it would get better once he did some more material. It never really got much better. There were some very funny parts where I laughed out really loud, but those were few and far between. The rest of his material was very predictable and not that funny to me. I looked around the room and I think some other people had the same opinion. There were quite a few folded arms around chests, indicating "I don't like this" body posture. Only a couple of people in the front few rows, a woman especially, were laughing at everything, even things that weren't jokes. Maybe they were the ones who really wanted to see Peter Berner as their first choice and hence find him really funny. Either that or because you are at a comedy festival event, you are expected to laugh more.

I just found myself thinking when it was going to end because I was bored. I never really got into it. I guess being late and knowing that 1/4 of my $28 ticket had already disappeared didn't exactly put me in the best mood. But Peter Berner's observational comedy wasn't that enlightening. It followed a main theme of what he wanted to teach his son and one particular prop. But the observations were very obvious and I was doing the punchlines in my head before he did his punchlines. The one section of his show that was a bit more risque was his best stuff, but that only went for a short bit.

Hopefully I might be able to go and see Ed Byrnes next week and have a good laugh and truly experience what the best the comedy festival has to offer. I probably wouldn't recommend Peter Berner's show unless you are a real fan of his stuff, in which case you would go regardless of what I say anyway. Save your pennies for some other acts.