Karate Man: A Live-Action Video Game review | Melbourne International Comedy Festival | The Butterfly Club

It's 1988 and Karatetown has been overrun by pesky goons. Luckily Karate Man is here to save the day. But can he expel all the goons AND get the girl? Karate Man: A Live Action Video Game comes from the ingenious minds of BEAK (Daniel Scarratt and Bruno Dubosarsky) where the entire story takes place in the style of an 80s arcade game.

The audience gets to dictate the narrative and all of Karate Man's movements, because as the show title subtly alludes to, this is a live-action video game. We are given a demonstration of the controller functions and then it's up to us to lead our hero to victory. Through some creative use of Bluetooth technology, when someone presses 'punch", the word is boomed over a speaker and Karate Man punches. If "left" is pressed, then the word left is announced, and Karate Man moves left. It's a fantastic way to get audience invested and engaged in the story.

Honk Honk Honk Honk Honk - Melbourne International Comedy Festival review

Before you even take your seat, Tom Walker has already started his show where he invites audience members to play a computer game that he has created. One in which you play as Walker's head, welcoming every single audience member and the dreaded dark cloud that are reviewers, grab those five star reviews and battle your way through the audience to a glorious standing ovation. While the game could do with a bit of work, Honk Honk Honk Honk Honk is a winner, and everything you'd come to expect - or not expect - from Walker and his weirdly wonderful humour.

Walker's mind seems to operate at incredible speeds and there's barely a moment for us to register what's just happened before he ends an act, discards the prop and moves on the next one. Knives are literally thrown across the stage and the next act begins before the knife has even hit the floor. It keeps us engaged and adds elements of surprise and disbelief along the way.