Do I Hear A Slow Clap?

Slow Clap Productions, a collaboration between Stephanie Brotchie and Vachel Spirason, return to the Melbourne Fringe this year with another off-beat comedy gem. Their second show, Truth, comes straight off the plane from the Edinburgh Fringe, and from earning critical and popular adulation earlier in the year at the Melbourne Comedy Festival and the Adelaide Fringe.

Spirason, Slow Clap's on-stage presence, reckons that the festival world is embracing their unusual kind of experimental, theatrical comedy. “Truth is a surreal physical character comedy, with some dancing in it.” Spirason says. “It's a strange combination and it has a lot of different elements to it: it is quite high energy with lots of different characters and, like our last show, it's still quite narrative driven. It kind of all weaves together from seemingly disparate elements.”

Spirason's keen to not give away exactly what happens in Truth, but the Slow Clap experience is always heart-warming, life affirming, theatrically innovative, and very funny. Their season at Edinburgh, the world's biggest Fringe festival, was a positive one. “It's a different thing in Edinburgh. Getting an audience is really competitive. There's over 2000 shows and things often get lost in how much is going on, but despite that we had some really good houses and a really great response from people.”

The various festivals this year have allowed Slow Clap to really fine-tune Truth. “Shows kind of evolve. They're like little animals that grow legs and start running around and sometimes they surprise you in the direction they end up taking. I suppose this show has become more interactive and conversational.”

Their last show, The Hermitude Of Angus Ecstatic, charmed Fringe audiences in 2011 but was a different beast. “Angus had a story-line that you were following, it had the voice of the narrator – I found that sometimes we had audiences that weren't that into it. You know, sometimes when people go to see a comedy show they expect someone up there with a microphone cracking dick jokes,” Spirason jests.

“With Truth the audience is there with you, so you've got a lot more control to go with people's reactions or what might be happening in the room. It's still very much not a stand-up show, but that feeling comes more to the fore.”

The Melbourne Fringe, which this year is open to comedy more than perhaps ever before, seems the perfect place for acts like Slow Clap, or Dr. Brown, or Alice Mary Cooper, who press the boundaries of comedy and theatre. “[It] is a fantastic festival, full-stop… I think a lot of people use the Fringe to debut new stuff because it's a very supportive and safe, artist-friendly environment. The audience is really savvy and switched-on.”

Just like Angus last year, no doubt Truth will tweak our little experimental art-loving nipples too. “Ultimately, if people come up at the end of the hour and say that they really enjoyed it, even if it wasn't what they were expecting, then that's the best thing you can have. It doesn't always happen, but it's nice when it does. It's lovely to win people over, and have them enjoy it even though they're not quite sure what to make of it, or if they've never seen something like it before.”