Dawe-inspiring Theater, once again
Fast paced, flippant, philosophical and a few other things besides, TJ Dawe wields a well-honed comic acumen in a piece of stand-up (and occasional lie-down) he calls A Canadian Bartender at Butlin’s.
A University of Victoria grad with a long, illustrious Fringe resume in his back pocket, Dawe has a reputation that always seems to bring out a big crowd, such as the one that packed the gymnasium venue at the Victoria Conservatory of Music Tuesday night. It was enough to make the muggy surroundings even muggier, a condition virtually ignored by an audience rapt by Dawe’s tales about a season spent slinging drinks at one of England’s famous/infamous Butlin’s holiday camps.
And be assured that Dawe knows how to spin a story into a twisted, hilarious lump of a thing, touched up with a little angst or irony, and maybe an annoying sound effect or two.
Some of his loftiest moments come towards the end of his 85 minute discourse, when he launches into a spiel on the vagaries of words and their meanings for a Canadian transplanted to English climes.
Many of the intercontinental differences that crop up catapult words or expressions from the everyday to the ultra-objectionable, Dawe explains. It can be oh-so-confusing, and pretty funny.
“It’s not part of the speech when your plane lands at Heathrow,” he says.
Jeff Bell
Victoria Times-Colonist
August 28, 2003
