Sydney Comedy Festival Review: Stephen K Amos ‘The Spokesman’ – Enmore Theatre (09.05.13)

Stephen K Amos is one of the long running comedians who often swings by Australia for the Melbourne International and Sydney Comedy Festival circuits. He’s been embraced by our audiences thanks to his charming and witty tales and he’s back this time with his show The Spokesman to prove that he’s not worthy of being idolised.

There’s no fanfare here, Amos introduces himself over the PA and he enters the stage wearing dark jeans and a black shirt. He immediately launches into his routine discussing news headlines whilst he’s been visiting our shores and the differences between ours versus the British. I think that one of the reasons why we take such a liking to British comedians is that we share a similar, often dry humour. As he continues through his set there is the fairly standard fare of taking a good (and repeated) stab at Adelaide and their bogan-esque audiences, being carded in Darwin when attempting to purchase alcohol as well as our Prime Minister being attacked by a sandwich.

But the main reason we’re here is for Amos to talk about how recently (particularly after coming out and revealing his homosexuality) a lot of people want him to be a spokesman or a person to be put on a pedestal. However he advises us all strongly against it, revealing his flaws and his fears which then takes us to the audience participation part of the evening. We’re encouraged to yell out our own strange fears, most of which are fairly standard except for that one about eyes being too close together or a woman who was afraid of choking herself in her sleep.

As with all stand up shows though, things go wildly off course when a heckler catches Amos off guard when Amos likening his twin sister to a horse gets asked if her eyes are ok. Our host comic is thrown so completely off course, he wasn’t expecting that and he’s lost it and he won’t deny it. Coincidentally things come full circle though when the heckler’s son becomes the target of Amos’ discussion of Generation Y so it’s nice to see him getting his own back. Considering that he doesn’t want to be a spokesman, he does a damn fine job of talking to us that he probably would be a perfectly good leader and we’d let him.

With Amos you’re guaranteed a consistent and steady pace with his show. There’s not much breathing space as he segues from topic to topic, and generally he likes to keep the local stories as fresh as possible. He’s endearing and surprisingly honest about a lot of the personal aspects of his life which is most likely why he’s such a popular comic.

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Carina Nilma

Office lackey day-job. Journalist for The AU Review night-job. Emotionally invested fangirl.