“Youwill never truly know yourself until you come and see Cameron James and Jared Jekyll in Paradise.”
This bold statement is the unofficial tagline of Paradise – a show about two rival comedians who are invited to perform at the Paradise Island Comedy Festival and things go terribly awry. Will our unlikely heroes survive?
Paradise is already taking Australia by storm, having received rave reviews at both the Perth and Adelaide Fringe festivals. It hasn’t always been easy though, as James explains, “It’s been kind of hard getting people to come in to see a sketch sometimes. I think Australia is pretty used to traditional stand up so telling people on the street ‘you should come in and trust this sketch show, you’ll like it’ especially when they’ve never heard of you, it’s hard. But everyone that we’ve managed to con into coming has really liked it.”
James and Jekyll met at Phuklub where they bonded over a shared love of music (“I wanted to be like David Bowie,” James confesses) and ridiculous improvisation. What followed was a decision to write an hour of material, although he says, “For a long time we just sat around talking about music that we liked, bands that we liked and concerts that we’d been to.”
The true inspiration for Paradise came from a trip to a comedy festival held on Rottnest Island in WA. “When we were there we came up with the idea of two people being brought to an island and it became more of a story than just a collection of strange bits and musical things and sketches.” By “strange bits” he may be referring to the advertised ‘hot sexin’’ in the show which he says “Is not your traditional sex scene, there’s no penetration, really.”
Audiences can also look forward to the fact the show “is pretty audience interactive heavy, we don’t spend all of our time on the stage, quite a bit of it is spent moving around the room and amongst the audience and getting them involved.”
So if you’re in the market for what promises to be a literally sketchy show with plenty of music and hilarity, you need to check out Paradise. James promises, “The biggest antic is probably the one that happens inside the hearts of all the audience members. Everyone who comes to this show will find love.”
CatchParadise at theFactory Theatre on Tuesday May 6, Thursday May 8 and Saturday May 10 as a part of the Sydney Comedy Festival, tickets through Ticketek.
