Tight Five review | Blake Everett | Melbourne Fringe Festival | The Motley Bauhaus

Being late to your own stand-up show is a comedian's nightmare, but for Blake Everett it is the premise of an entire show. Tight Five follows Blake as he bounds across Melbourne to The Motley Bauhaus, encountering a succession of strange characters and increasingly ridiculous obstacles along the way, all for the chance to deliver five minutes of stand-up. What starts as a simple race against the clock quickly becomes a playful mix of stand-up, theatre, and improvisation.

From the moment Blake wakes up, Tight Five is happy to break the fourth wall, with him acknowledging the audience as he works through his morning routine. It becomes even more meta when we realise the stand-up show he is late for is the very show we are watching. When he calls someone in the audience to discuss whether they can somehow pause the show so we don't know what is happening, the distinction between Blake's world and ours becomes deliberately blurred.

From there, we follow Blake as he attempts to get to The Motley Bauhaus, meeting some unique people along the way, including a Frenchman selling vapes from the back of a van and a passerby who gets her portrait drawn by a caricaturist. The latter involves an audience volunteer, something Everett uses throughout the show to varying degrees of involvement. These interactions are never critical to the story, but they give Everett opportunities to improvise and have a little fun with the audience.

With a show like this, some jokes are going to be funnier than others. The random musical number about Arnold Schwarzenegger pays off by the end, while the mushroom scenes lead to some of the show's more absurd moments. The interactions with his friend Harry at the venue are also fun to watch. On the flip side, a fast-food scene could do with a rethink, and some throwaway lines about his sense of direction should be removed altogether.

Everett is very likeable on stage and has an easy rapport with the audience, which helps the more deliberately chaotic parts of the show land. He is also good at switching between scripted material and sprinklings of improv. Props are used well throughout, helping turn Tight Five into a comedy theatre show rather than simply the stand-up set Blake is racing to perform.

Tight Five is an enjoyable hour of comedy that works best when Everett is simply having fun with the absurdity of the situation. Not every detour or joke lands equally well, but the combination of audience interaction, improvisation and theatricality keeps the journey entertaining. And while the five minutes of stand-up may be the destination, it is the ridiculous journey getting there that makes the show worth the trip.

SHOW DETAILS

Venue: The Motley Bauhaus, 118 Elgin St, Carlton
Season: 5:45pm Friday 9 and Saturday 10, and 4pm Sunday 18

Duration: 60 minutes
Tickets: $30 Full | $25 Conc
Bookings: Melbourne International Comedy Festival

Image credit: Blake Everett