The Orchid & The Crow

The Orchid & The Crow is a stripped back confessional pop-rock music comedy about Judaism and cancer.

Before we start lauding the snappy comic delivery, endearing performance and fantastic music, we need to say this is an absolute must-see comedy simply by virtue of tackling religion and cancer without relying on cheap jokes or tastelessness (although taste is of course relative… there was that ditty with God singing about collecting as many penis tips as he can get… but there was context!)

The point is this is a candid confessional monologue/songologue from performer Daniel Tobias that lays bare his experiences with religion, idolatry and cancer, but at no point do you feel the content is used exploitatively: it is all about the skill of the storyteller-singer-comedian. When Tobias was relaxed and natural his personality captured us and delivered all the right emotive shifts, he was only let down by the occasional signposted punchline where a joke or story was over-directed and forcibly acted. But the tragi-comedy was expertly crafted (with David Quirk as script consultant we’re not surprised) and every song was flawlessly delivered, the music created by Tobias and Clare Bartholomew (more commonly known as Die Roten Punkte) with John Thorn and Jherek Bischoff. All in all: a fantastic, dramatic, hilarious show. See it.

Tower Theatre, Malthouse Theatre to 22 Feb