Heath Franklin's Chopper
Make Deadshits History
Laughing Stock Productions
The Arts Theatre
Until Wed 9 March



Heath Franklin takes a fairly deserving target - losers or 'deadshits', as he would say - and lets loose his version of Australia's favourite vigilante stab-victim, Chopper, all over them in this show. The performance largely involves stand-up, interpolated with a lot of audience interaction and a number of clips talking about the evolution of words that deal explicitly with what apparently constitute a large part of the population.

Heath Franklin's strength is in dealing with the audience - the casual set up of the show, and the forward manner in which he presents himself, allows for a lot of audience interruption, which frequently take forms that would probably seriously unsettle most latte-sipping comedians. Heath takes it like we imagine Chopper would, and always manages to turn any kind of abuse or rudeness back on the source in an extremely funny way. And it's in doing this he kept on putting out his best line - "put it in a diary".

But like other unofficial and vague populist causes stand-up comedy (not to mention everyday conversation) deals with, like the never-ending quest to uncover and discredit phoney-ness - this one suffers from a nasty bit of reflexivity. That is, saying deadshits are stupid and worthy of receiving pain is all good and well, but when the advocate themself is in the process pretty much embodying those they target, some credibility is lost. Or perhaps it just makes it sillier and funnier... In any case, in seeing this, it's definitely better to forget the 'cause', jack-up your laughing-gland to respond only to obscenities, and you'll have the night of your life.

William McGinley