Daniel Townes and that..! .


Wednesday 8th March


I chose this show from browsing the flyer table at the FringeTix Box Office in Fringe Alley, bought tickets, then was surprised when I was offered free entry from the comedian himself out on Rundle Street. I was taken aback to see the guy pictured on my flyer in the street looking for an audience. To me performers are these ‘untouchable people’ on stage who you don’t normally come in contact with in real life. Perhaps I need to ‘get out more’.

The free entry included the show before so I was already at the venue before Daniel Townes’ show. We had been seated at tiny wooden chairs in front of the stage for the previous performance, at their request, to help them feel like they had an audience, and now moved back to the comfy couches for Daniel’s show as his audience was considerably larger. This, of course, was fodder for the comedian and at once we knew that we were here to be poked fun at.

He used the audience for his entire show, unlike the previous comedians who appeared to have prepared their performances. Was this due to his apparent greater experience/success or just his style? I don’t know as I had not seen any of them before. The bigger crowd probably also helped with his engagement with the audience. There was one lady at the back of the room that laughed at absolutely anything he said which would have helped him considerably I imagine. There was never any ‘dead air’.

The audience was predominantly younger, 20’s and 30’s, and very keen to join in. Two girls in the front hung off his every word and kept interrupting his performance by chatting to him. I had never seen anything like this before. Another large, semi-intoxicated man was sprawled over one of the couches lounge room style and seemed very comfortable taking mobile phone calls throughout the performance. Daniel tried to include this brazen behaviour into his performance but I think the man was a little too far gone to be co-operative. It didn’t have a bit impact on the performance though, just a bit annoying.

At the end of the show, Daniel had hit a bit of a lull with a joke not even the groupies found funny and began searching for something he could use to go out with a bang. Obviously, this was an important way to finish a performance – ‘leave ‘em laughing’.