Two old friends, one pretend car, and decades of stories and experience.
Vehicle is a scripted meta-comedy from Shane Adamczak and Sam Longley (Weeping Spoon) that invites the audience along for the car ride down to ‘Mukenboon’ where the boys intend to impress Elton John’s brother-in-law in a talent contest. It’s a last-ditch attempt for the two to ‘make-it’ as performers, despite two healthy careers on Australian screen and stage.
This begs the question: when have you ‘made it’ as an artist? Am I mid-career or late-career? Have I even emerged yet? What is in a chiko roll anyway? I digress.
Photography by Mitchell Richards.
The story itself isn’t much to write home about. It is, after all, just a vehicle to showcase the talent of the two creatives. Expert mime, precise comic timing and fluid, whole-body transformations between character are all on show. Set ups and call backs are stitched in seamlessly throughout the work, and the meta commentary on conventions like the looping animation behind them or winding up and down of the fourth wall like the window of a 1998 ford falcon are all signs of two masters of their craft.
A few sticky points. Longley’s admission he wants to bottle up his occasional fury at risk of contributing another ‘big scary man’ to the world feels out of place in this show. Adamczak’s reunion with his appendix has almost nothing to do with anything else in the story and is the one point where most of the humour derives from a costume rather than the performers themselves
Photography by Mitchell Richards.
Nevertheless, this is a playful and enjoyable showcase of two comic experts. I feel as though Vehicle is the perfect fringe show. It’s a chance for two artists to flex their creative muscles, it invites the audience in for an evening that will have them in stitches (the laughing kind, not the bowel obstruction kind), and showcases talent which is otherwise only on show at the mercy of funding or programming by others.
This season of Vehicle at State of Play has now closed, but you can keep up with Weeping Spoon by following their Facebook or Instagram.