This sounds serious and conceptual. Randy is thoughtful. “It’s so serious. I spent three years in a wooden shack in the far north writing it. But in the show I get distracted every time I get serious. For me, writing a book is the only way to get conceptual. The theme is legacy, what we leave behind. Is art only art if somebody pays attention to it? If a man writes a book in a log cabin and no-one knows, is it still art? It’s pretty amazing; it’s an opus.”
Randy has performed the show in Adelaide already. “It’s very funny – I stripped back, telling the audience what I think, staking my claim as the moral compass of the planet. It takes someone with a real sense of moral corruption to tell people what’s right or wrong. I’m not going to listen to someone who’s never done drugs tell me not to do drugs. Randy Writes a Novel will be the greatest comedy show ever done at the Melbourne Fringe Festival and the second best piece of spoken word in the southern hemisphere, topped only by Raymond J Bartholomeuz’s mid-’90s exploration of Phillip Island, by Brian Nankervis.
“Every year I do a show revealing the darker, misanthropic aspects of my character, how shit I am, my alcoholism, about the intricacies of having and maintaining relationships – women find that attractive.” The sort of women who write letters to murderers in prison? “Yeah; I’m going for the prison market. No, there’s no Mrs Randy; I am definitely married to my job. I’m nowhere near a relationship. People can mind their own business. I rant at the audience about the things that give me the shits, what we’re doing as a species – there’s enough poisonous vitriol – maybe it will get through. I don’t really give a shit. I don’t even mind if people don’t come. I’ve just made a show I like doing. It’s a very funny show. If people want to come and laugh at me saying words out of my mouth, they are more than welcome. If they’d rather sit at home and ponder the awful life they’ve chosen to live, they’re welcome to do that instead.”
Randy says that in the hour her spends on stage he feels most alive. And safest. “You spend your life trying to avoid people who might kill you. We’re a lot more fragile than we think; we’re just bags of water. I spend my life navigating that experience – getting up on stage makes everything else go away.”
BY LIZA DEZFOULI
Venue: Fringe Hub – Lithuanian Club, 44 Errol St, North Melbourne
Dates: September 18 – 25 (except Monday)
Times: 9.15pm (Sunday 8.15pm)
Tickets: $25 – $28
