“We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realise the truth.” – Marilyn Monroe *
Lou Wall
tells a story about the time they tried to sell a bed frame on Facebook
Marketplace to a woman who couldn’t seem to follow instructions – kept asking
for a discount on a freebie, and wouldn’t arrive when she said she would. Actually,
Lou doesn’t just tell the story, they sing it. It’s a mini musical and every
time I hear it, it’s laugh-out loud funny.
Lou’s shows
often feel like manically scrolling through social media, or googling things
you can’t quite remember, leaving dozens of tabs open in your wake. The first
time I heard the story about the bedframe, it was in the context of weird
internet rabbit holes and people you can’t quite trust online. The conversation
is frantic and the miscommunication is hilarious. It feels real, because even
if we’ve never sold something online, you can imagine the kind of people who
are looking for a bargain might be a little unhinged.
When Lou re-used the song during last year’s show The Bisexual’s Lament, set up with slightly different context about their living arrangements and played as if it was all part of their recent break-up, I was slightly suspicious. This didn't happen this year. I heard this a couple of years ago.
But it’s a
good bit. It’s a tight five. It’s catchy and hilarious. Why not wheel it out
again?
In Breaking
the Fifth Wall, Lou’s new show, they finally reveal the truth. It never
happened. They never sold a bed via Facebook. The whole thing was crafted
around the essence of the chaos of the internet, but the facts of the story
were entirely fabricated.
Comedians
lie all the time. They bend the truth. They fudge a detail to make the joke
work. They leave out the full context to keep the humour up.
Hannah Gadsby
used to tell a joke about flirting with a woman at a bus stop. The woman’s
boyfriend mistook Gadsby for a man, and threatened to beat Hannah up. When he
realised his mistake, he backed off and said “Sorry! I don’t hit women! I got
confused. I thought you were a faggot.”
Gadsby’s original
punchline was a wry “What a guy! How about you don’t hit anyone!”
In Nanette,
after years of selling this moment as a bit of tension that was ultimately
defused, Gadsby admits they left off the end of the story for the sake of the
joke. In reality, he figured out Gadsby was a “lady faggot” and beat Hannah up.
Obviously,
there is truth in Gadsby’s original joke, so they left out the end for it to
work in their comedy show. From confessional Nanette onward, Hannah
Gadsby didn’t want to relieve tension for the audience. Since then, their work
has been a lot more open, honest and unvarnished – but some of it remains artifice.
It’s a show, after all.
Breaking
the Fifth Wall
examines lies and truths in media, while deconstructing every trick in Lou Wall’s
playbook. If you've seen a show of Lou’s before, you know there’s a lot of video work,
talking to themself, internet searches and snatches of songs and dance moves
that liven up every story they tell. Nothing on their stage is mundane, even if
living it was mundane.
The lies
are easy to buy into. Lou has created a persona that is, umm, off-the-wall and difficult
to pin down. They are full of energy and talk at a million miles an hour. Their
shows tell us they are a lot; now they want us
to believe there’s nothing they love more than playing solitaire with
actual cards.
Probably a
lie, but who knows?
They use a
lot of theatrical trickery to undermine what we think is going on. Even a
tangent like “Comedian or Serial Killer” – they both work in basements and
their ultimate goal is to kill – ties in neatly to Lou’s theme about lying to
keep the joke going.
There’s a
scale of liars and a litany of examples of how Lou themselves has broken “the
fifth wall” – their family being the Walls, of course. There’s photoshop and deep
fakes and moments of honesty that might also be fiction.
Like Hannah
Gadsby and Zoë Coombs Marr can do at times, Lou leans closer to performance art than
traditional stand-up. Zoë directed this show, and makes a quick
blink-and-you-miss cameo, and the two have worked hand-in-hand to shape a work
that defies explanation and summation but has something important to say about
fake news and lying and exaggerating for effect.
Breaking
the Fifth Wall is
the ideal Comedy Festival show – you will laugh from beginning to end, but you
also might learn something. Because even if Lou Wall is lying to you, they are
also warning you what to look out for so you don’t get caught out again.
Lou Wall is
a comedy genius. I called The Bisexual’s Lament one of their finest
hours. Breaking the Fifth Wall is even better, because in this
self-reflexive comedian’s hands, pulling everything apart is their version of really
opening up.
But now
that we’ve seen behind the curtain, what in the hell will they do next? Just
keep lying to us probably.
- Keith Gow, Theatre First
Lou Wall is lying to audiences at Comedy Republic until April 20
* this is a lie. Pablo Picasso said it.
Here's the Facebook Marketplace song that started all this....
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