Aussie standup Ty Gray has a grade-A knack for turning boozy sunrise house parties and straight-up blokey mucking about into a comedic artform.
Holding court in the stone-walled basement of Collingwood’s Grace Darling Hotel, Ty’s aptly titled 50 Shades of Ty Gray offers a tight 50-minute roundup of every bad decision and risky hookup he’s been entertaining in recent years.
Anecdotes involve thoughts about his job as a teacher, and “favourite” kid at school – not that you’re supposed to be so blatantly preferential in a role like that – on account of his convenient stutter, allowing Ty to run his mouth after some particularly rough nights out without risk of being dobbed in.
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The bulk of Ty’s material follows the laddish misadventures of the eternal adolescent, regularly bouncing between beds and sneaking through kitchens with 12 rando’s after the night before just kept going. It’s all conveyed with a likeable array of rough edges, and enough self-awareness to recognise that his constant partygoing, on the cusp of 30, is probably ill-advised but nevertheless quite funny.
The low-ceiling, narrow confines of the basement venue assisted with the confessional, highly anecdotal form of the show’s shape and off-the-cuff storytelling. For all intents and purposes, sitting in the audience felt akin to catching up with a close mate after their three-week bender overseas.
An added source of mild tension came from the early admission that Ty’s mother was also in the audience, making some of his less savoury stories all the more entertaining in the knowledge they were relayed to a crowd including his primary caregiver.
Not that she fared much better than her son, by virtue of a bizarre account in which a family member took “the alphabet one” – MDMA – at a pub on a Sunday night, having been given it by their cohorts at the bowls club.
Such are the appealingly batshit activities which end up in Ty’s act, and his inoffensive blokey charm makes you almost wish you were there with him.
