Eddie Perfect Articles/Reviews

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Brace yourself for the all-singing, stand-up watchdog
November 16, 2004

Twin set ... Eddie Perfect is delighted to be working with Max Gillies.
Photo: Peter Morris

Eddie Perfect and his biting satirical songs are about to hit the big time, writes Bryce Hallett.

As his name suggests, Eddie Perfect doesn't like to go unnoticed. The singer and satirist has become a singular force in the past few years, choosing to create opportunities for himself rather than try to fit ready-made productions.

If you haven't heard of Perfect, who has performed in some modest cabaret shows, then you're not alone. But that's about to change when he takes the stage in Sydney this week alongside veteran satirist and actor Max Gillies in The Big Con.

Not only that but Perfect, 26, has contributed the music and lyrics to the show - a partnership that is sure to add energy and kick to Gillies's customary act.

Scripted by Guy Rundle and staged by Aubrey Mellor, The Big Con brings Gillies and Perfect together on stage for a second time but in a much more exposed and mutually dependent fashion. They met when they starred in Michael Kantor's production of Babes in the Woods for Playbox Theatre a year ago.

"Our collaboration happened by accident," says Perfect. "We were performing in this crazy bush panto written by Tom Wright and we got to know each other.

"Max was impressed by my style of humour, which is very dark and wicked ... The gloves come off in The Big Con, and I've been given plenty of freedom to explore and to be as obtuse and as obscene as I like.
"Max has been doing political satire for years and I've been at it for all of five minutes, but our political leanings are similar and the pieces are coming together. I don't have to come up with songs to advance the plot - it's more about playing with themes and making it timely. Political satire is very hard to do when times are uncertain and when people are afraid ... The show is partly about the all-consuming trend to the right and has lots to say about global imbalance, especially in terms of the rich and poor.

"But don't go thinking that it's a pat on the back for left-thinking people because it's not."

There's little doubt, however, that the re-election of the Howard Government and of the Bush Administration brings greater currency and bite to Gillies's brand of humour, in which imitation is not a sincere form of flattery.

Perfect, who grew up in Melbourne and studied music theatre at the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) in Perth, has never been one for splashy imported musicals or cabaret shows. He loves nothing better than hearing Australian accents and our own stories on stage and screen.

"It's been hard to find a home for what I do and for what I'm about," says Perfect, whose serious demeanour is tempered by his big laugh and grab-bag sources of amusement and distaste. He's not short of an opinion about injustice, the cult of celebrity, the media, complacency, suicide and consumerism.

"I write because I've got things to say. Maybe I'm a singing, stand-up watchdog."

Perfect says his determination to stay true to his own feelings and voice, to seek a worthwhile outlet for his talent, stems from "seeing a lot of theatre and musicals that don't affect me all that much. The thing I love is irreverence and getting people to see things differently. I've been inspired by comics like Lenny Bruce and Bill Hicks; they made me realise that comedy can be devastatingly powerful.

"You could say I'm a stand-up with music, as I love walking out on stage and performing my own songs and ideas, but I don't consider myself a comedian."

One reviewer pithily sized him up: "The voice of a matinee idol, the looks of a post-punk rocker and, if a chainsaw could talk, it's name would be Perfect."

The satirist and singer-songwriter admits that his brash, opinionated stage persona has put him in some tricky situations with audience members keen to pick a fight. "When I perform I'm deliberately subversive and people assume I'm this brutally honest, blunt guy, and they feel it gives them licence to be brutal back. But away from the stage I'm considerate and polite ..."

Like many emerging talents, particularly those who graduate from music theatre courses and the like, Perfect has strutted his stuff at various auditions or "cattle calls".

"After WAAPA I went for a part in a big concert production in Melbourne," he says. "It was disconcerting because the director never looked at me during the audition, and I got this perverse idea in my head that I might be able to take my pants off. While I was singing I started to unhitch my belt and still the guy didn't look up ... I finished the song with my pants on and as I left the stage, the director said, "Thank you, we get the picture."'

For Eddie, it was a turning point that was just about Perfect.

The Big Con opens at The Playhouse on Friday. Previews will be performed tomorrow and Thursday.

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Life's a cabaretFebruary 25, 2005





Eddie Perfect
Photo: Supplied


Cabaret-comedian Eddie Perfect is in the top 10 of Australia’s brightest young sparks, and that’s something we can all laugh about, writes Jo Roberts.



He knows how to get a laugh, does Melbourne cabaret-comedian Eddie Perfect. Just don’t laugh at his name. Look at the White Pages online, there’s seven Perfect listings — so it’s no joke. Really. But Eddie — christened Edmund by Mum and Dad Perfect — has copped a lifetime of doubters.

“I still have bad experiences with my surname, people still don’t believe it’s my real name,” he laments.

That’s the trouble with satirists; you can’t always know if they’re having a po-faced lend of you. Especially when they look as cheeky as Perfect. And his ingenuous barbs usually come dressed in a beatific smile as he tinkles away at the piano keys and croons in a silky tenor that we are all “John Howard’s bitches”. But more on that later.

Since graduating from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts in 2001, Perfect, 27, has packed a lot in. He’s appeared on television shows including Blue Heelers and Stingers, staged solo shows such as Angry Eddie and Transcending Anger Towards Something More Marketable, and collaborated on shows such as the wonderful Cliff Hanger: Catch a Falling Star.

He’s clocked up awards, too, ranging from Green Room, Fringe and Comedy Festival honours to last year’s Bulletin magazine’s Bulletin- Microsoft Smart 100 award, in which Perfect made the top 10 of “the best and the brightest 100 Australians”, as winner of the arts and entertainment category.
That accolade sits uneasily with him, especially after being flown to the awards ceremony in Sydney, which featured Jamie Packer as keynote speaker. “They were just talking about smartness and creativity with relation to business and economic return,” he frowns.

“I found it all a bit distasteful. I didn’t really like being lumped into that basket.”

Who knows what awards may still be to come for Perfect, who since then has moved even further up the comedy ladder, having created a new show with Guy Rundle and the elder statesman of Australian satire, Max Gillies. After a successful Sydney Opera House premiere season, The Big Con, directed by Aubrey Mellor, begins its Melbourne season tonight.

Gillies and Perfect met while doing Babes in the Woods together at Playbox in 2002. After seeing Perfect perform his own Angry Eddie show, Gillies invited him to guest in The Big Con.

The show, as the name suggests, offers its own cynical take on local and global events. Perfect has written most songs specifically for the show, offering “a young person’s perspective on what can be fairly distancing subject matter”.

“A lot of my friends who came to see the show in Sydney, they don’t find Max’s stuff so easily accessible as older people.” he says. “So it’s also about two people seeing the same issue from different angles.”

Indeed. It’s unlikely we’ll ever hear Gillies — even from behind someone else’s face — sing tunes with titles such as John Howard’s Bitches, Gay People Shouldn’t Get Married and Stop Being So September 10.

Lyrically, Perfect likes to push buttons, much like the other Australian satirists he shares management with — the band This Is Serious Mum. In Some Of My Best Friends are Aboriginal, Perfect lampoons the rationalisation popularised by vilifiers of Australia’s original people.

“It really exposes what an unexplored wound we have in relation to indigenous culture,” he says.

“There’s something just below the surface in the Australian psyche that, as soon as you start a song about Aboriginals, people freak out, as in they think, ‘Am I going to have to listen to a really racist song, or is he gonna attack me?’”

Some people immediately go on the defensive. “They get so caught up, they don’t listen to what’s actually in the song, or understand the irony or the satire,” he says.

“I had one woman come up to me after a show and say ‘I don’t really think racist jokes are funny, I thought that was a bit shit’. You try and explain, but . . .”

It can be the price to pay for serving up satire sans spoon. “I like the kind of satire where people aren’t sure where you’re coming from; that puts them off balance, that there is a possibility there’s no satire at all,” says Perfect.

“The Big Con’s really good that way — it’s not just a pat on the back for lefties who come along and have a bit of a group laugh; it does actually say ‘well you’re all actually complicit in what’s going on’.”

[red_cherry]

http://www.newmatilda.com/home/artic...&CategoryID=54

this was written by eddie apparently in response to what someone wrote about his show, unfortunatly I cant access the article he is responding to but its pretty good anyway,,, go eddie!

[lily]

Hmmm... that was interesting. I like the way he writes when he's fired up. I'd like to read the letter it was a response to.

[Renee_Turner]

I'm not paying the subscription fee to do so, but the response was funny, eloquent and stomped on George fairly successfully. Loved it.

p.s. I don't think there's anything wrong with Eddie's hair either.

[red_cherry]

Nope I am a fan of 'the fin' its cool, bet the george guy is just jealous coz he wears a tupe or something lol

[Edward]

The article to which Eddie was responding is now available to view free of charge.

I think the lesson is - "grumpy unionists" don't want anything remotely 'edgy', they want the same safe, moderately clever, left-friendly political satire they've listened to all their lives.

[red_cherry]

The author of tha article sounds like an idiot. Yay Eddie!

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http://www.edinburgh-festivals.com/r...?id=1760132005

Eddie Perfect

ROGER COX


ASSEMBLY @ GEORGE STREET (VENUE 3)

THIS angry Australian's sense of humour is so caustic it could strip paint off railings, and his material makes you wince almost as often as it makes you laugh.

Eddie is ticked off with consumer culture and he wants us all to stop "sucking on corporate cock". He's angry about Guantanamo, too, and cluster bombs and the questionable morals of the Christian Right but, instead of hitting us with a predictable, right-on rant, he attacks the objects of his ire in a series of barnstorming, cabaret-style songs, backed by a tight-as-drumskins three-piece band.

Perfect's singing voice is a thing of raw beauty, his lyrics are shrapnel-sharp, and his ability to conjure up a cast of richly textured characters - from the middle-class wimp who obsesses about recycling plastic bags to the psychopath who wants to juice the girl who works behind the counter in his local juice bar - is deeply impressive. It's unfortunate, then, that there are a few too many flat spots between gags for the show to develop much comic momentum.

• Until 29 August. Today 9.20pm

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pic of eddie at fringe sunday

http://www.edfringe.com/gallery/view...unday&highres=

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http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...E16947,00.html


In the eye of a Perfect storm
Susan Horsburgh
September 22, 2005


WITH his bleached, fin-like hairdo, his baggy, low-slung jeans and thumb holes driven into the sleeves of his jumper, Eddie Perfect looks more like a skateboarder than one of Australia's rising stars of cabaret. Get him talking about his craft, though, and there's no doubting he's serious. He just has trouble claiming the c-word, "because most cabaret is shit," he says.

<SPAN class=bodytext>Perfect loves the immediacy of it, but says cabaret, like most theatre, is so geared towards baby boomers that most young people give it a miss. "It's camp and slightly indulgent," says the 27-year-old singer and satirist, who writes all his own songs. "It's a fantastic art form; it's just a shame that it's been hijacked."

Perfect's cabaret has a more aggressive bent, peppered with profanity-laced songs such as Some of My Best Friends Are Aboriginal, Poor Little Middle-Class Me and Stop Being So September 10. In his latest two-hour show, Drink Pepsi, Bitch! - which opens at Melbourne's Malthouse Theatre tonight (and transfers to the Sydney Opera House next month, with the litigation-dodging title Drink Eddie, Bitch!) - he has consumerism, internet porn and evangelical Christians in his comedic crosshairs.

"I don't have any answers for anything," says Perfect, who graduated from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts in 2001. "It's really just about pulling things apart and going, 'Is this more sinister than it seems?' I have no idea how to live. I just know that some things feel wrong."

Take modern-day messiah Oprah Winfrey and her Wildest Dreams bus, which travels around the US granting Americans their most outrageous wishes. Posted on the Oprah.com website are 700 pages of dream requests, Perfect says, including one from a girl who wants a makeover so she can look less white, and another from a budding scriptwriter who wants to make her film and star in it opposite Brad Pitt. The postings inspired Perfect's composition Where's My Flat-Screen TV, Bitch?



"[Oprah] has a social conscience obviously but it's co-opted by her brand," Perfect says. "I just have an instinct that there's something not quite right. It's the idea that God doesn't answer people's prayers but Oprah Winfrey does, or that material things will fixproblems. You can have a home-theatre unit but it's not going to solve your relationship problems."

Perfect lives in the inner-Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy with his girlfriend of several years, actor Lisa Sontag. He says his Catholic upbringing bred a social conscience, but also a cynicism about religious institutions: hence his show's attacks on the Christian Right and evangelical groups that run courses to "treat" homosexuality, Alcoholics Anonymous-style.

From his preoccupations, it seems obvious what side of the political fence he sits on, yet Perfect still has a tendency to bamboozle his audiences. Performing at the Edinburgh Festival last month, the self-confessed mad lefty says he'd sing Gay People Shouldn't Get Married and then be reproached after the show for being homophobic.

"I love satire the most when there's no wink and there's no nudge so it does make them confused," Perfect says. "[But] I was trying so hard to go, 'Look this is irony', I could have put a frigging neon sign on my head. And it still didn't work ... In Edinburgh so much of it is this sit-back-why-should-we-like-you [attitude]. So you've got a leash that's about 10cm long and you're keeping them on that. In London it was great; they were happy to be manipulated. You get an audience that's into a certain joyous masochism and it's really good fun."

When he toured the country with Max Gillies in The Big Con last summer, one reviewer wrote: "Perfect switches adroitly from smooth, dapper co-host to perverse pianist with plenty of venom and bite". Butnot everyone appreciated his blue language or his black humour. Perfect says people in Canberra and Adelaide, in particular, baulked when he essentially told them they were hypocrites.

"There are people that go, 'I don't come to the theatre to be insulted' and I disagree. I think you do go to the theatre to be provoked, surely," he says.

Perfect counts Lenny Bruce and Bill Hicks among his comedic heroes. And he happily lines up for a lambasting himself: "I've tried very hard not to just be this weird creation of a left-wing superhero so I try to amplify all [my] problems as well. I'm just as easily able to turn on the ideologies I support as well as the ideologies I don't support."

The son of high school teachers Tom and Judy Perfect - no, it really isn't a stage name - Eddie grew up in the middle-class Melbourne suburb of Mentone in a home where the arts were encouraged. Every Saturday his parents would take him and his two sisters to the local bookshop. "The most important things in our family were music, literature, films and theatre," he recalls. "We got dragged along to everything. They didn't spend their money on holidays or cars - we lived quite simply - but they spent a lot of money on us doing singing, playing instruments, going to see live theatre."

As a child, Perfect had always wanted to be a visual artist so he enrolled in printmaking at RMIT after he finished high school. But after a year he dropped out to study music at Melbourne University. "That was painfully academic - I hated it because it was nothing to do with performance," he says. "Being able to perform was reserved for the very select few."

After two years there, he entered WAAPA and finally found his artistic niche. "I fell arse backwards into writing songs and that turned out to be the medium that I feel is my best form of expression," he says. After graduation, he did some acting in theatre and television, including roles on Blue Heelers, MDA and Kath & Kim, before writing his one-man show Angry Eddie in 2003. "Perfect is sharp, smart and right on the button," raved one critic. "He has the stage presence and confidence of a veteran."

These days he considers himself equal parts musician and comedian. "I haven't really bought into the comedy world, where you aspire to do TV and then breakfast radio," says Perfect, who has won Green Room, Fringe and Comedy Festival honours. "I just do my own thing ... I would love in the long term to have the profile and body of work behind me so that people came to see Eddie Perfect rather than a specific genre - and maybe that's a kind of genre initself."

Next year he plans to write a new show for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, which he'll then take to Edinburgh. The advertising budget will be increased to make a bigger splash, but he promises that his material will be no less provocative. "Comedy," he says, "should be really dangerous."

Perfect took his own advice last year when he took his show on the road to the Northern Territory and sang Some of My Best Friends Are Aboriginal. "I pretty much got booed off stage every time I played that song," he says. "The first show in Alice Springs, that song finished and there was just absolute silence, people mumbling to each other ... I just wanted to stop and have a workshop."

Still, he refused to drop the song from his line-up. "When you're a performer you want people to like you and when they don't you have to make a choice between what you believe in and your need for affirmation," hesays. "My instinct is to be brave and stickwith the things I believe in, for better orworse."

So how did he deal with the audience abuse? "I just said, 'Sorry to ruin your night by making you think - here are some more dick jokes'. And I finished with an anti-Ray Martin song." Drink Pepsi, Bitch! is at the Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne, until October 2. Drink Eddie, Bitch! is at The Studio, Sydney Opera House, October 19-29.

[Renee_Turner]

Originally Posted by Eddie Perfect

"I just said, 'Sorry to ruin your night by making you think - here are some more dick jokes'.

Hahahahahahahahahaha. I like it.

[lily]

Performing at the Edinburgh Festival last month, the self-confessed mad lefty says he'd sing Gay People Shouldn't Get Married and then be reproached after the show for being homophobic.

"I love satire the most when there's no wink and there's no nudge so it does make them confused," Perfect says. "[But] I was trying so hard to go, 'Look this is irony', I could have put a frigging neon sign on my head. And it still didn't work ... "

HA! I feel vindicated now - the latest girl to be entertained at chez lily had a huge issue with me liking this song, insisting that it was homophobic - I mean seriously, "their tongues would have carpet-burn,/ no food in the fridge, just small containers of sperm" - how can you possibly not get that that is pulling the piss?

[red_cherry]

Ahh to many people have iron rods up their arses, good on Eddie for proceeding regardless and challenging people to actually have a sense of humor and not take everything so damn serously for a change!

[circus_kid]

challenging people to actually have a sense of humor and not take everything so damn serously for a change!

Hear, hear!