Hung Le
Hung Like Me
Higher Ground
Tues 20 March
until Fri 30 March


'Hung Like Me' is the second fringe show I've seen at this year's Fringe where an Australasian comedian makes the most of his ethnicity for laughs, as Hung Le quickly proves by stepping out on stage wearing a shirt with the word "Gooklyn" written across it. But despite the fact that Le is obviously the more experienced comedian, I enjoyed Jason Chong's 'Minority Retort' more. Which is not to say that this show is not a lot of fun.

Le's act is actually less specific to ethnicity, an aspect that mostly comes into play during the first part of the show where he displays pictures of his recent trip home to Vietnam. This is an interesting mix of jokes and some quite personal stories that you don't often see in a stand-up show. Other topics that come up are the immigration policies of Tamworth, the "War on Tourism" and suicide bombings. While Le brings a cheeky, sometimes risky, wit to all of these subjects, the switching between them seems a little unfocused and it disrupts the flow; some of this, though, may be due to first night jitters.

In between the jokes Le brings out a ukulele and performs a slew of hilarious parody songs on his various topics, including spoofs of I Will Survive for Jihad Jack, Dock Of The Bay ("Sittin' in Guantanamo Bay...") for David Hicks and a furious, multiple-recipient version of The Devil Went Down In Georgia. The best of these, and the show's highlight, was an Amanda Vandstone themed I Still Call Australia Home to close.

Henry Nicholls