‘GIVE us something to laugh about,’ we beg the universe tonight.Like the three witches of Macbeth, my sisters and I descend upon a comedy show, casting a blight over the effervescent young crowd with our matching thunderclouds and a shared expectation that the cathartic laughter would soon release us from the memory of a miserable work week.
“It better be funny,” my sister warns me, complaining that braving the usual horrific Friday crawl to Trec, the nightlife hub at Jalan Tun Razak, has left her frazzled and irate.
We order some drinks and more food than we can toss down. After all, if funny fails, there’s always food to ease the pain.
We’re here for the live comedy act at the Live House organised by LOL events featuring Canadian Ron Josol, dubbed the new generation of Asian comedy along with three other opening acts, Brian Tan, Gajen Nad and Dan Tackage. Like three cantankerous bats, we take our seats, waiting for the show to start in anticipation of the laughter to roll in.
We’re probably the sort of audience every comedian dreads. A strategically-placed table not quite right in front but near enough to be within the aforesaid comedian’s range of vision, filled with staring, po-faced women nursing a couple of mojitos and chucking down fries while all forms of puns whizz pass their heads.
So when others get every style of funny thats doled out from the stage leaving them spasming with laughter, we calmly sip our drinks and hope to God the next punchline will do the trick.
GETTING THE JOKE
To be fair, stand-up comedy isn’t easy. With no narrative structure, plotless without a backstory and no producers or editors in sight, it’s simply raw comedy pared down to its elementary form — a comedian and an audience, where you either score a laugh or you don’t.
It’s an unusual brand of entertainment, yet one that’s an ascendant phenomenon which is slowly gaining popularity, moving out of the archetypal two-drink-minimum joints and crowded tiny spaces to reach a wider audience. Unsurprising because let’s face it — we all like to have a good laugh.
There’s laughter all around us tonight. So I’d be remiss to say the acts including Josol’s weren’t funny at all. They probably are, judging from the easy tittering from the crowd. However, it’s that sense of déjà vu which overrides the humour, akin to watching a magician rehash his same tricks. Magic still works but ho-hum, I’ve seen it all before.
Pulling off the familiar kvetching most comedians make a career of — their inability to date, live in their own skin, relate to other human beings, the race jokes and peppered with the ubiquitous ribaldry — gets the laughs.
It’s funny but doesn’t quite compensate for the dearth of anything fresh or insightful to say. So yes, there are more misses than hits tonight, at least for me and I refuse to meet the gazes of my unamused sisters. After all, I did promise them a night of side-splitting humour.
Our lack of humour isn’t lost on Josol later in the night. After all, we’re in his line of vision which is unfortunate for both audience and comedian.
“This table has been dodging me all night. I get it — the jokes are dirty and you guys are well... nice people,” he says to the laughter of the crowd. He goes on smoothly to link it to another story and we finally laugh. Josol: 1, Po-faced sisters: 0.
“I used to blame myself but I’ve done too many shows to burn myself. I blame the audience. Because if I’ve done this joke a thousand times and the audience laughed a thousand times, and the one time it didn’t work — that’s not me, it’s you,” points out Josol when I ask him later if he has ever had an off-day onstage. Plainly put — if you don’t get the joke and the others do, then the problem is really yours. It’s probably not the comedians’ off day, it’s ours. After all, it’s a comedy show-lah, not therapy to lift you out of your blue funk. Point taken.
BEING THE JOKER
Still, the one thing we can agree on is that stand-up comedy has to be funny. That’s the underlying definition of comedy we can all get behind before we shrapnel off into arguments of subjectivity and deciding between what makes good comedy or bad. It’s definitely an art form that few venture into and one of the most difficult art forms to master.
Being a stand-up comedian requires much more than just seeing the humour in every day events. It’s all about inflection, timing, build-up and delivery.
“It’s hard work,” admits Josol, adding: “In America, I’d go up at least twice a night from Sunday to Wednesday to practise during open-mics and then Thursday to Saturday, you get paid to do comedy at a club like this.”
He goes on to share about how he keeps working at his inner-funny: “From Sunday to Wednesday, I’d write around 20 jokes and keep practising those jokes that week. Whatever that works, I keep. Usually around three jokes out of 20 works,” he says wryly.
The hard work has paid off. Despite some hoary material tonight, there’s no doubting that the 42-year-old comedian can craft and tell a decent story on stage, while working the audience at the same time.
“It’s called improvisation. It’s a different skill. You need both — what you write and your interaction with your audience to make it real,” he says, smiling. He got his start on touring with mentor and fellow Canadian Russell Peters, long before Peters became the comedy superstar he is now. In fact, Josol was with him when fame and fortune struck.
“He’s naturally funny but he works harder than anybody I know,” reveals Josol. “I was a new comic who just started off when I first met him and he’d already been doing the circuit as a regular comic. He wasn’t amazing in the beginning but eventually, after literally working day and night, he got really good.It took a lot of hard work.”
Josol adds that he’ll never forget the piece of advice Peters gave him in the early days: “You’re really good but you’ll have to keep practising. If you’re not working hard at anything, you won’t be good at it.”
LAUGH AND THE WHOLE WORLD.
The night progresses on and we’re mellower. The mojitos help as do the chicken wings and copious amount of fries. The audience is laughing, we’re smiling and Josol’s banter with the audience stops short at being vituperative. He’s this loveable cherubic man on stage and adroitly keeps his likeability factor high, despite the occasional coarse humour which dances up to the borderline of bad taste. He manages to skillfully reel it back in and everybody’s happy again.
We aren’t the only ones he pokes fun at. He points to his attire and says with a shrug: “I don’t even like this. I just wear this so you don’t see my love handles,” and pointing to the chain he wears: “I don’t like this chain either. I just want you guys to look at this so you don’t focus on my stomach.”
The self-deprecating humour works. We lap it up and he moves on smoothly to more risqué topics which garner louder guffawing and some red-faces.
The laughter, the applause and the way the energy builds up through the show tonight seem to be totally spontaneous expressions of the audience’s will. And yes, we find ourselves reluctantly following his subtle cues when to laugh or applaud through his gestures, timing and vocal inflections.
He’s a funny guy on stage — the quintessential man next door with a ready smile and a chuckle which underscores every joke he shares.
Is he a funny man off stage? He pauses before replying: “Anybody who is funny on-stage has to be funny off-stage but I’d describe myself as a funny-thinker. There are funny people naturally and there are funny thinkers. I’m the latter.”
He’s put a lot of thought to keep his audience in stitches. But he still feels his audience is generally the same everywhere. “I’ve done comedy in 50 countries. I really don’t see the difference with what they feel is funny and what you guys here feel is hilarious. Let’s put it this way: Everyone likes to eat fish but how it’s prepared, marinated and eaten differ from place to place. So what I have to do is let them eat fish but prepare it in a way that they can digest it. This means I’ll use references that you guys get or everybody gets,” says Josol.
“Sorry, sir... everybody waiting. A lot of people...” We’re interrupted by a plea from the waiter who comes in with an apologetic look. He has a lot of fans waiting and ever the crowd pleaser, he’s eager to greet them.
The interview quickly comes to a halt and as I watch him amble off, I’m reminded how the connection between the comedian and his audience is a strong one, based on laughter and the power it wields.
After all, nothing else has quite the same power to make us feel relaxed or connect a roomful of strangers together, like the ability to laugh at the same jokes.
There are a lot of happy people tonight. And there’s us three. We may not have laughed all that much but heck, the mojitos were good and the food was better. We did laugh a little and our moods have improved considerably, as with the traffic jam outside. We can certainly agree on one thing:It’s a whole lot cheaper than therapy.