Review: THE BIG THINGY at The Regal Theatre for Perth Comedy Festival

Not your typical comedy, The Big Thingy is quite unlike anything I've ever seen onstage before. The show sees performer Nadia Collins embody an orange, cardboard suited alien who lands on earth and must learn how to be human from her audience. Think Mr Bean if he was an alien from Classic Doctor Who, replete with a cardboard and tinfoil set and you're probably not too far off the mark. The low budget feel and charmingly weird premise left the audience both delighted and perplexed in equal measure, with the rubbery faced Collins tottering from one audience interaction to another with all of the child-like wonder you might expect from a benevolent alien force encountering humans for the first time.

As a versatile comedic performer who has trained extensively in physical comedy and clowning, Nadia's background was crucial in a show where the improvisatory nature and its reliance on audience interaction could make or break it. A quiet or unwilling audience could easily leave this show flailing, but Collins routinely had them in stitches of giggles, even if they were sometimes uncertain about how they should interact with her. Highlights included a young audience member blurting, "You shake like Donald Trump!" after teaching the thingy how to shake hands, some obscenely funny interactions with an audience members beer, and a misheard turn of phrase about "back pocket germs" which somehow morphed into something much more inappropriate. Other highlights included a round table discussion about parents, dad jokes, and giving birth - resulting in an audience member becoming parent to two adorable slime babies.

Ahead of the Perth Comedy Festival, The Big Thingy was workshopped here in Perth in January before moving on to Adelaide Fringe and the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, where Collins recently took out the best newcomer award. This show works beautifully in an intimate venue, and would likely work for any age group. I'd love to see it in performance with a young audience, or even a mixed age demographic and see what they make of it. The beauty of the comedy in this piece comes not only from imitation and repetition, but also from the big thingy's genuine misunderstandings, turning the smallest things into a hilarious and often touching look at the weirdness of the human race.

I very much enjoyed this piece and I will be very interested to see where The Big Thingy lands next.

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