Love Monkey

Love Monkey
John Paul Hussey
At the Northcote Town Hall
Until June 15

I don’t know if it’s important or not but I never saw either Chocolate Monkey or Spacemunki. It’s just how it is really, either you’ve got a show on or you’re recovering from too many shows, and you just can’t make it to see everything so you sometimes miss the big thing of the moment cause you can’t be arsed to go. You’ll catch the remount, you think, and then never do. Besides, not to put too fine a point on it, despite the publicity, Danny had not heard overwhelmingly spectacular things about either show.

Hence, with a due sense of foreboding, we sat front row at the Northcote Town Hall for the third in John Paul Hussey’s simian trilogy, Love Monkey. The twittering hip people behind us smugly demonstrating in a slightly too loud voice designed to be overheard that “Oh, JP will probably pick on me for some kind of audience participation” did nothing to improve my expectations.

I must say though that “with lowered expectations” is Danny’s favorite way to go into a show. Invariably these turn out to be the best experiences and Love Monkey was not the disproving exception. It’s been an unfantastic run of shows for the last couple of months, hence Danny’s reluctance to review, but the universe threw us a bone and Love Monkey was it.

Regardless of how you feel about monodrama you’ve got to give it up for a guy who can memorise an hour and a half’s text solo. Clever, though not overly clever, use of props and set sit Love Monkey just on the edge of that “Magical Theatre” experience that’s so popular at the moment because we can’t stand to look ourselves in the face and prefer to dance around with vacuum cleaners and the soundscape Hussey’s rant is set to is, in Danny’s opinion, one of Kelly Ryall’s best so far. One hesitates to call Hussey’s characters loveable because you get the feeling that JP isn’t the sort you want to meet in a darkened bar where you can’t see what he’s putting in your drink but there is an undeniably endearing quality to them which, when layered in with Ryall’s world of sound, some slightly less than inspiring digital projection and some cute observations about life makes for an entirely watchable show.

The sign of a great night in the theatre is so often not noticing every agonizing second slouch by and an hour and a half passes in Hussey and co’s company leaving you to bop out into the night whistling Supertramp (and thank god for Supertramp by the way).

The question Love Monkey leaves you with, of course, is which are you? Danny says Intense Dionysian Hobbit.

Danny Episode