Tony Law has won a heap of awards over the last few years. He’s been described as ‘one of the most delightfully zany and disconcerting comedians around,’ who takes stand-upto a dangerously funny new level,performing a show where‘chaos has rarely been so finely conducted and this much fun.’ “I try not to read that stuff,” says the UK-based comic. “But if people ask me what I do, I could read all that out to them.” Law is on his first visit to MICF for ten years; Melbourne last saw him when he was a relative newcomer, when his shows featured, among other things, a time travelling sausage dog called Cartridge Davison.
How did Law find his way to comedy? “I was a funny child,” he answers. “My parents laughed at me a lot. I saw it as a way of trying to get what I needed.” But were they laughing at his humour or laughing at him? “I saw it as the former. I took the optimistic view.”
Law has a hybrid kind of accent; people always ask him where he’s from. Sometimes he says he was born in Trinidad and Tobago, which then leads to him wondering how you can be born in two places at once, unless you were born on a plane travelling between the two islands. Law works in the absurdist flight of fancy vein, presenting stream of consciousness-type verbal scenarios that seem random and free flowing. “The world is absurd. It freaks you out if you think too much. Doing stand-up is a great way to open yourself, but masked up to be a surreal comedy routine. Underneath it all is your comment on life. On love, fear, responsibility.”
Law points out that his routines aren’t as random as they might seem. “Those themes are totally planned. It’s not 100 per cent riffed although it’s all organic. I like to take the literal and the obvious and figure out another way of getting it across.” He thinks up his comedy on the way to those new material nights they have in London. “Whatever I think of on the Tube or on the bus on the way in,” he says. “I’ll think of five words to riff on. The ones that stick I’ll build up into routines. You’re constantly working. Just reading the paper is part of working. Stuff comes out. Over the years, I’ve built up a fan base, so I like them to know I’ve got a proper work ethic and I’m going to give them a new show. My audiences have been described as hipster dudes and freaks but nice people. My wife says there’s not one of them you wouldn’t want to have round for dinner.”
If Beat were pushed, we’d compare him to say, John Kearns or Sam Simmons or even Eddie Izzard; it’s not joke-based comedy, in other words. “I don’t make gags, but sometimes I do accidentally, without planning to. Sometimes I’ll have a notebook on stage [and] pretend to read from it. I’m deconstructing the entire ‘process’ – I hate that word. There are so many layers to it. My audiences are often a clever crowd and I want them to know I’m not taking myself too seriously. It’s good, I don’t want you to think that I think it’s good, but I do think it’s good. I’m not one of those people who are going to be ‘provocative’ or ‘edgy.’ But I did once do an entire routine about how dangerous I was.”
BY LIZA DEZFOULI
Venue: Melbourne Town Hall – Cloak Room, Cnr Swanston & Collins St, CBD
Dates: Currently being performed until April 19
Times: 9.45pm (Sundays 8.45pm)
Tickets: $25.50 – $33.50
