Live Malaysian Stand-Up Comedy Preview: ‘Aussie Rulez’ & Tasteless Doses of Oz for Your After-Hours Needs

IN these interesting, transitional, post-Raya times, apart from our money back – what do we need? In conjunction with the Melbourne International Comedy Festival Roadshow, PJ Live Arts Centre (PJLA) is bringing some premium unfiltered Aussie-themed shits and giggles to after-hours Malaysian crowds straight from Oz at the main theatre tonight and tomorrow night.

The One Mic Stand-hosted preview earlier this week promised much…

Single-handedly keeping new Malaysian comedy alive is the One Mic Stand team of Prakash Daniel, Brian Tan and Keren Bala Devan, all hungry local comics who’ve taken it into their own hands to set the scene alight with zero demand and zero expectations from pretty much untapped crowds.

Folks probably like me, whose comedic appreciation may be only limited to the late Bill Hicks, George Carlin and Richard Pryor, and maybe Chris Rock and Mitch Hedberg, though not above Pablo Francisco, Russell Peters and Aziz Ansari, who really don’t know what to expect from a local stand-up experience. So enough with the name-dropping, here’s what I remember from what was essentially preview night of what’s to come.

Howling hosts and the local support

Prakash, also a professional photographer, relished his turn this week as preview night’s potty-mouthed host – and they’re all crazy, with not much distinction between the three of them.

Brian was unassumingly deadpan and comically assured as he opened the night’s proceedings to warm the stage for later havoc from the likes of Aaron Aw and featured guest Urzila Carlson. The measured Brian came off as one of the more prepared local comics perhaps with a bit more stage time under his belt, and invited the evening’s first cackles with a running set of fresh 1MXX-related material.

Keren was a one-man angry mob, always one rant shy of an isolated amuk case, railing against everything from Malaysians loudly stating the obvious at the movies to young Malaysian parents bringing small children into the cinema to Malay Power freakos.

Come to think of it that last subject seems to be the go-to ‘bahan‘ as fallback material for most of the local comics lined up at PJLA’s Cabaret room that night. If freedom of expression becomes even more of a non-entity after this week, these One Mic Stand gigs are the forum to hear what you probably already think giddily said aloud, made sinful fun of and unraveled as loaded Manglish comedy fodder.

The healthily hetero though slightly sex-crazed Aaron rolled onto the stage as to amp up the stakes just that much higher, armed with gender-specific insults for the front row and his own damn phone number plastered on the back of his low-slung kapok guitar (which he used to smash together crude sing-alongs about “dreadlocked c*ck hair down there” on the spot). An unsatiable wad of Blanka from Street Fighter II-meets-Dirk Diggler energy, repression clearly does not exist in the vocab of out-and-out new Malaysian personalities like Aaron, and his cum-on-sight, pasar malam nympho from hell act teetered on brash comedic genius.

After which followed more organised chaos from Lordson Yen, the talented and well-spoken, Sarah Silverman-esque Malaysian transplant in New Zealand with the flawless American drawl, Luwita Randhawa, and the conflicted accountant Vikram Balaji straight out the motherland, India mari, with well-worded jokes about wives.

Mat salleh highlights for the main event

The realest set of the night was stuck into our faces courtesy of Urzila, who played the tough Aussie chick by way of South Africa and New Zealand for a non-confrontational suburban KL crowd; and localised Englishman Justin Heyes (a shall we say, acquired, presence onstage and, “what would happen if Susan Boyle had fu*ked Bilbo Baggins“, as the comedian himself had put it) were the highlights of the night with their respective riffs on polite Malaysians who are proud “b*tches playing hard to get” and marrying into a Malay family only to end up hating Raya forever. Both will be there live and on the stage at the PJLA’s theatre hall.

Headliner Nick Cody seemed to rush through his closing set, sincerely riffing through his best beer-drinking tales from Oz, and none-too-proud trips to New York City and Cirque du Soleil, and visibly still in second or third gear and likely warming up for the big one…

*As our Aussie friends would say, get amongst it! Get details for tonight and tomorrow night at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival Roadshow .