Alexis Dubus Versus The World - Comedy Review

What: Alexis Dubus Versus The World
When: 10 - 22 April 2018
Where: Hairy Little Sister
Created and performed by: Alexis Dubus

Alexis Dubus

Alexis Dubus is a very funny man. He is a man of many talents, many accents and many words and we get the exquisite and unusual experience of being able to enjoy a great deal of them because he has brought us two very funny shows this Comedy Festival season. My last review was of his hilarious alter ego's show - Marcel Lucont's Whine List and here I am about to regale you with the intelligent humour of his spoken word routine called Alexis Dubus Versus The World playing at Hairy Little Sista.

Dubus calls Alexis Dubus Versus The World a spoken word show because it kind of breaks all of the comedy category tropes. It is a little bit stand up, a little bit pantomime, a little bit cabaret, a little bit punny, and he even throws in a little bit of burlesque just to shake the apple from the tree. All of it definitely falls into the category of spoken word though because all of it contains...well...words.

As fine a comedian as Dubus is (and he is very fine indeed!), he is also an accomplished wordsmith. Swinging effortlessly and unexpectedly between high Shakespeare to gutter trash you are expected to listen well to get the full joy and hilarity out of his work. At times his vocabulary exceeded that of the audience but for those of us who knew what homophonic means, there were wonderful nuggets of gold to embrace intellectually.

Dubus' performance included a lot of wonderful poetry as all good spoken word shows do and he is not afraid of the rhyming couplet, using rhythm and accents to make the predictable leap into hilarious and beyond. It is not possible for me to say I had a favourite poem but I intend to visit Wookie Hole if I ever get back to England and I will probably avoid getting a massage next time I am at the Singapore airport.

Some of the poetry moved into the territory of music and his observations about bananas has a definite reek of the Fresh Prince about it. There was also a very strong Monty Python influence to some of his music which is always a winner of course.

Alexis Dubus Versus The World is an eclectic mix of content but all of it is incredibly satisfying. Dubus was last here four years ago. In that time he has managed to get married and his foolproof advice on how to propose is certainly unique but, as he says, in his experience it has a 100% success rate.

We are really lucky he has chosen to return and even luckier he has brought us two iterations of his fantastic comic mind. See both shows in tandem. You won't regret it.

3 Stars