Reviewed on Thursday October 17
Even for a Sydney Opera House audience, everyone comes over a little starstruck tonight. And fair enough, too – the closest Whose Line Is It Anyway? ever got to Australia in its heyday was Colin Mochrie playing it up in front of a green screen.
Touring alongside Mochrie is his on-and-off Whose Line partner in crime, Brad Sherwood, and together they’re an improv force: Mochrie is funny by appearance, mannerism and mind, while Sherwood is quick with a one-liner and sharp with a song. When Mochrie drops Sherwood into a three-minute-long improvised rap about defacating money in a motorcar dealership, somehow he makes it to the end without stumbling off course.
Moreso than an episode of the Drew Carey-hosted TV hit (latterly fronted by Aisha Tyler), the gig is heavily reliant on audience participation – to varying degrees of success. Actually, there’s only one buffoon invited to finish Brad and Colin’s sentences who manages to drag them insufferably wide of the mark. Everyone else asked to join in for a classic Whose Line game, like Sound Effects or Moving People, does a great job.
Soon enough, it seems the audience members thrust onstage are getting bigger laughs than the stars themselves, though it’s largely because Mochrie and Sherwood are happy to set them up for a punch line.
The much-vaunted mousetrap game lives up to its billing: Mochrie and Sherwood play out a scene while walking barefoot and blindfolded around a stage covered in 100 of the traps. When Sherwood attempts to catch Mochrie cheating (he is, but pulls his blindfold down milliseconds before Sherwood’s comes up), it’s the best accidental physical gag of the night.
A musical number to finish, and a standing ovation – Mochrie had promised at the top that although they hadn’t written a show to perform, there’d be one by the end, and so it was. Irresistible fun.
3.5/5 stars
BY CHRIS MARTIN
