Tired Clichés
This guy's headed for the stand-up hall of fame. Tired Clichés is one of the most original, tightly conceived and well-performed comedy acts I've seen.
TJ Dawe's sensibility is based in weird observations and in musings that feel like they might come from a slightly stoned adolescent: "Why do people smile for every photograph? We are not always happy"; "What if the manhole cover you're about to step on is just a perfect hologram of a manhole cover?" It's not that Dawe cracks knee-slapping jokes; his work is more subtly perceptual than that. He reaches inside your head and shifts your brain just enough to make you good and giddy.
Unlike most comics, who string gags together in thematic clusters, Dawe exploits the language of theatre to build a solid hour's entertainment that yields ever increasing rewards. He starts his show with a death-defying somersault into a pile of cardboard boxes - he'll do it agian and again - and he virtually dances his way through his performance in a kind of geeky Gumby ballet. And he hurls himself into rhythm with all the joy of a Beat poet. Percussionist Jason Overy accompanies Dawe in Tired Clichés, and it's a brilliant, playful match that amplifies one of comedy's most essential elements. Dawe binds his performance together with lighting motifs - certain material can only be delivered in blue light; other stuff requires the spooky intimacy of a match's flame - and he strings out a number of different themes and story lines that he weaves together in a cataclysmic comic climax.
Beneath all this lies a delicious sense of wonder. In the matchlight, he tells us that some ghosts don't know they're dead, so we might all be being dead together. Somehow, that becomes a reminder of how incredible it is to be sentient, to be with other people. Let comedy take you there.
Colin Thomas
The Georgia Straight
