Chris Taylor & Andrew Hansen

"I should say there is a pile of your magazines that I step over when I go to my rehearsals; it's used to chock open the theatre door.”

Andrew Hansen and Chris Taylor are leaving the rest of the Chaser to hit the stage and in their One Man Show. “It's something that Chris and I have wanted to do for a very long time, is to do a two-hander sketch show, playing various silly characters and bursting into lots of songs. Finally we had this big span of time to do that.” 

Hansen and Taylor are the more bizarre side of the Chaser group but what they bring is a classic, ballsier side of comedy. In the past their antics have stirred the pot, Hansen's song regarding the deaths of celebrities in particular pushed the boundaries of insensitivity and brilliance. 

It's a hard task for the musical duo. On TV it's easy for Hansen to rip out one song; an hour of comedy is pushing Hansen and Taylor. “I'm trying to get my head around all the songs especially because I do each song in different character and it becomes hard after about the tenth song and trying to figure out a different voice you can sing in without sounding like the same guy.” Hansen continues, “We have a right wing commentator singing a song, an annoying hipster singing about his addiction to cable TV dramas and how he doesn't talk about anything else. Which is also Chris and me.”

In a world where imitation versions of The Office and Louis CK flow through the comedy world (what Hansen calls “those real subtle sitcoms that don't have a laugh track, about people in awkward situations, that has been quite fashionable for the past 14 years”), it's nice to see them going to the alternative: classic satire and absurdity. “There is sort of a post-comedy happening now,” Hansen explains, “where you have to go far beyond what has been thought and said and way beyond the style that has gone before. I suppose there is something to be said for getting up and being silly and delivering some jokes.”