Bush Boy, Big City Fringe Club January 11 A sheep-neutering Dad and an opera-singing mum taking a boy from the wide open spaces of southwest Queensland to the bright lights of Sydney at the tender age of five.
The ingredients of Ian MacDonald's one-man autobiographical show, Bush Boy, Big City, were promising. 'Crocodile Dundee: The Early Years' perhaps? 'Aussie Clarke ha ha ha'? Well, sometimes it worked: 'School was 80 miles away. If my sister would have gone there to learn anything, by the time she got home she wouldd have forgotten.' The impersonations of the koala stoned on eucalyptus and the kangaroo limping away from an encounter with a truck were marvellous.
The trouble with Bush Boy was its billing as a 'comedy'. This was a burden for MacDonald. His story of a displaced family was sometimes sad and, in the end, touching. There were laughs, but the main response was polite attention as he went through his hour's discourse on his formative years.
There was no apparent attempt to gild the lily as all great comedians do. Unfortunately our everyday lives, even our everyday lives in the Australian outback, are seldom sufficiently amusing, insightful, exciting, or informative to hold the attention of a paying audience without a little autobiographical licence.
We did get the warts and all, or in this case father's boils, grandfather's emphysema and a fairly malicious sounding sister.
The problem is that unless you are a consummate storyteller - a Peter Ustinov or an Alan Bennett - simply recounting your childhood memories is probably best kept for your shrink or your Auntie Violet.