Cori Gonzalez-Macuer is a great, unusual and very Kiwi comedian I wish I saw more often.
His jokes are mostly short-form, sometimes just one or two sentences, and delivered largely with a cool, deadpan monotone he's mastered.
It's genuinely difficult to tell if Gonzalez-Macuer's low-energy performance means he's really confident and nonchalant, or very self-conscious and shy. He delivers stand-up pretty much how he delivers his lines in What We Do in the Shadows; just like a normal conversation, with no theatrics.
His show White Background Confused Face touches on a lot of different stuff. It included bits about cannabis, Lorde, America, craft beer, the proposed Wellington Walk of Fame, Hitler, spilling water, Auckland bars, David Bain, his partner, New Zealand celebrities, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi of al-Qaida, Tui ads, chlamydia, CrossFit, his car, PowerPoint and the Vietnam War.
That's about half the topics or so.
There's not much of an over-arching theme tying everything together, but one reoccurring element is material to do with what it's like being a comedian and his chequered history in comedy.
It's very meta, but not in that lame "that was a callback, wink!" kind of way. He's far more witty, with much more interesting observations than most comedians that do 'meta' sort of stuff.
There's a great bit of audience participation that illustrates a frequent frustration comedians endure, which is probably where this show veers furthest into anti-comedy territory. I loved it.
White Background Confused Face has some really great visual gags via a projector. My favourite was a series of his old gig posters, accompanied with some pretty harsh self-deprecating commentary.
While Gonzalez-Macuer started off brilliantly, he did lose a bit of steam toward the end of the set. Or maybe I did, it's hard to tell, but I certainly laughed a lot more in the first three quarters than I did toward the end.
There was a bit where he tried out "new material" that was, I think, intentionally unfunny little jokes read off a piece of paper. It was the weakest part of an otherwise fantastic set, for me, but shortly after it he finished strong with a great closing gag.
Awarded the Billy T in 2006, Gonzalez-Macuer is a veteran of the local comedy scene and one of its more unique talents. This humour is perhaps a little less obvious or accessible than what is generally offered at the festival, but for those who dig it, it's also more satisfying.
White Background Confused Face has two more shows at Auckland's Basement Theatre - tonight and tomorrow night.
3 News
source: newshub archive
