REVIEW: Kristen Schaal – As You Have Probably Never Seen Her Before (from 25.3.08)

This article was originally published here on Vibewire.

With her cherub features and timid voice, Kristen Schaal instantly endeared herself to an enthusiastic crowd under the Melbourne Town Hall. Best known for her role as super-fan Mel on the popular television show Flight of the Conchords, Schaal has garnered a growing reputation for her “quirky” humour, winning awards including the Andy Kaufman Award for Creativity in Comedy. Her quirky creativity is certainly present in As You Have Probably Never Seen Her Before – a show that pleases as much as it confounds and intrigues.

Schaal’s performance is a mish-mash of styles and threads that often tends to work in spite of itself. There is no overriding structure to the material save for wherever Shaal’s often stream-of-consciousness logic takes us. One moment we are in familiar stand-up territory with Schaal riffing on iPhones and life on the comedy tour, the next we are in a comedic sketch with her partner Kurt, and later we are treated to a ‘sneak peek’ of her of her one-woman theatre piece on Anne Boleyn. She often treats the stage as some sort of therapeutic confessional - sharing intimate details of her dreams, as well as inviting us to critique her audition for an upcoming role on Law & Order: SVU. There are few traditional ‘jokes’ – the humour is largely drawn from Schaal’s persona, a character whose fragility, timidity and naïveté masks the vicious wit and brilliant force of ideas lurking beneath the surface.

While it is billed as a solo show, just under half the material is performed with her partner Kurt Braunohler – including some of the show’s more successful endeavours. Their interplay and sketches all show off Schaal’s persona to its greatest effect. This is largely due to Braunohler’s performance, which is also character driven, and the devotion and adoration his persona displays for Schaal.

The show is intentionally amateurish and anarchic in its execution. At times this style works wonderfully – Schaal hilariously transforms into Anne Boleyn simply by donning a black cloak and a woeful accent, and becomes Pocahontas by putting on an ‘authentic’ Indian headdress. Not everything hits its mark, however, and there is a thin line between anarchic comedy and anarchy. The emergence of her ‘boyfriend’ and later Winston Churchill from within the audience seemed to be more trouble than the effect warranted.

In many ways it is a credit to Kristen Schaal that she leaves the audience wanting more. Like comedians such as Demetri Martin she displays a truly unique and brilliant imagination that engages a well as entertains. However the material, as entertaining as it was, suffered from being stretched a little thin over the 60 minute performance. The pacing of the show often laboured slightly, with some material going on longer than needed. That said, Schaal’s performance is consistently funny, imaginative, playful and, above all, unique.