Lano & Woodley Articles/Reviews

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http://www.theage.com.au/articles/20...544473929.html

Duo's talent shines throughReviewer Andrew Murfett
March 31, 2004

Lano and Woodley

The Island, Lano and Woodley
Athenaeum Theatre, March 27

Lano and Woodley's new show draws on the premise of Col and Frank taking a trip together to Hawaii, a concept hilarious enough in itself on paper.

Sure enough, they work every conceivable argument and dilemma, and the boys' energy is remarkable.

An unexpected fire and unintentional stage malfunctions provided added mileage and drew plenty of laughs out of the adoring audience.

Yet, there were several blemishes. A recurring scene with an animated judge was funny the first couple of times but grew more tedious as the show went on.

The Island is a shambles - not that this is necessarily a bad thing. With the show based on improvisation, it's hard to say if Lano and Woodley's blunders are intentional.

Ultimately though, The Island accentuates their comic skill and ability to think on their feet.

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Two tribes go to war

January 28, 2005





Colin Lane and Frank Woodley prefer to be called tree 'cuddlers' than 'huggers'.




Lano & Woodley guarantee you three laughs a minute in their version of Survivor. Ben Cubby wants that in writing.

The Island
Where: Sydney Opera House Drama Theatre
When: Saturday to March 5
How much: $27.50-$40
Bookings: 9250 7777

One person whacking another over the head with a frying pan shouldn't be funny. But when Colin Lane and Frank Woodley do it, it is.

The pair mine jokes from a comic tradition ranging from Laurel and Hardy to the Two Ronnies and even Roy and HG. Their stage personas, Lano & Woodley, are condemned to play out the same roles in an infinite variety of scenes and settings. Lane is the manipulative, domineering side of the trapped relationship; Woodley is the pliant, happy-go-lucky half.

It sounds terrifying, but somehow emerges as funny. Their work only occasionally reaches the gut-cramping zenith of hilarity, but they bubble along, milking every corny joke for all it is worth, rarely uttering a line that doesn't wring out at least a giggle.

Their new show, The Island, sets the two characters on a desert island after a plane crash. The crash routine is basically a backdrop that allows them to get on each other's nerves for 90 minutes.

"It's been described as a work of theatrical genius - by us," Lane says. "It's really the only show with murder and cannibalism that is worth seeing. There are three cacks per minute. That means the show contains about 270 cacks. I guarantee it."
The pair are particularly proud of the large set that has been transported from their home town of Melbourne for the show.

"We kind of wanted to raise the bar in a way," Lane says. "We built this enormous big stainless-steel set, with an electric motor that spins it around. It fulfils all the different locations in the play. It's an island, it's a courtroom, it's the staircase in an apartment. It's not funny at all, but it's spectacular."

The show contains many moments of the physical "action comedy" that Lane and Woodley have been developing since they started performing on the Melbourne club circuit in 1987. The style feeds off the physical energy between the two. Invariably, it means one of them, usually Woodley, gets hit over the head.

"It's always been a case of clowning with us, but it's not just slapstick," Lane says. "We don't go down too well on radio, so part of it is the physical thing. We just love doing action comedy. Visual comedy. I've noticed that with our films. Not that we've made any films."

Woodley: "I reckon we naturally just tend to be physical. We love doing action comedy. It's always been the way. When I was growing up, I was watching Get Smart on the telly and The Goodies and a bit of Laurel and Hardy and Inspector Clouseau.

"And a lot of the time Colin just falls over, anyway. Maybe that's the reason we do what we do - we're just a pair of clunky dickwits. Look at Ian Thorpe - he was born with huge feet and he became a swimmer. Smart move. We were born as dickwits and we are making the most of it in comedy."

Some find their frenetic style of comedy a bit too much to take.

"I met this man while I was walking my dog and we had a great old talk," Woodley says.

"We got on really well and talked about everything. Then, as I was leaving, he said,

'I just have to say this. I find your show on television really irritating.' So clearly there are people out there, somewhere, who don't like it."

But they feel the Lano & Woodley combo is something their normal characters are well suited for.

"We've released our inner show-offs over the years and that's how it comes out," Woodley says. "The opposite qualities have become stronger and stronger because that's what works."

How does Lane feel about always being the bad guy in the duo's skits?

"People often come up to me afterwards and ask why I was being so horrible to him [Woodley]," he says.

"The personalities we have onstage are pretty much gross exaggerations of the ones we have naturally. I am maybe a bit more cynical and Frank's maybe a bit more naive about life. And onstage we just go a bit overboard with that."

Woodley: "Oh, I'm so naive, I thought I was the authoritarian one. Oh, well."

[Spoofy]

Lano and Woodley Articles from Adelaide Advertiser over last few days


A fabulous roadtrip


Frequent visitor Lano, one half of Lano & Woodley, explains why our Festival and Fringe are unique.

If you get in a taxi anywhere in Adelaide at Festival time and say to the driver “The Fringe, please”, he will know EXACTLY what you are talking about. In Melbourne during the Melbourne Comedy Festival, you say “Comedy Festival at the Melbourne Town Hall, please” and the driver will say “Okay, but you direct me”. The Fringe is obviously one of the world’s great festivals and Lano & Woodley have been coming to it since 1988.

Why wouldn’t you.

Scott, who used to work with us in Found Objects, said that everyone around Australia would just say it as one word, “Goinadelaide?”, because it was just expected that you would always be going. Even if not to perform, you’d certainly come over to observe. We’ve done the Fringe seven times. Twice as Found Objects and five times as Lano & Woodley.

The times we’d come as a trio were very interesting, especially driving over from Melbourne in Scott’s VW Kombi back in 1990.

We broke down outside Bordertown and the auto club guy came to look at it, opened the back of the engine bay, looked at Scott and said: “Ah, I can see your problem.”

Scott replied: “What’s that?”

The response was a pause, then: “Neglect”

We had to drag all the props out and rehearse in a park near East Terrace because we couldn’t figure out where else to do it.

I think the best bit of that trip was getting arrested for putting posters on the walls of the Lion Arts Centre.

Actually, no. I think the best bit was when Found Objects were doing a show at a nightclub where we were suppose to do two nights but were told to go away after one. So we decided to front the nightclub owner and say this just wouldn’t do. We went down to his office – a small room under the stage, with its only exit blocked by one of his goons. Picture this – three guys in board shorts, painted op-shop jackets and white skivvies, trying to convince the mafia-looking guy to pay us out for two shows instead of one.

Scott: “Hey, look mate. We’re on a tight budget here and we need the income from these shows to pay our accommodation in Adelaide.”

Frank tries to look tough by putting his hands on his 18-year-old skin-and-bone hips and says with an incredibly pathetic tough voice: “Yeah!”

The club owner replies in a <i>Sopranos</i> TV show voice (do the lines with the accent, out loud – it’s fun): “You guys were s… nobody liked ya. You spilled water all over my f…’n stage.”

We used to do his bit where Scott would be dreaming he was a paintbrush and Frank and I would pick him up and dip his head in a bucket of water and paint something with his hair, which we thought was hilarious.

Sopranos voice again: “What do you want me to do? You want me to tell my boss that these guys were s… and then I paid them for a show they never did? Whaddya think he’s gonna do? What the f… do you think he’s gonna do? He’s gonna slap me in der mouth. That’s what!”

Ahhh…..

But the main thing about the Fringe is its timing.

What better way to make everyone go absolutely crazy for a month than to only put the Festival and the Fringe on once every two years. What a piece of marketing genius. The excitement, the number of people to catch up with, the number of shows you have to see, the number of shows you wish you hadn’t seen, people continually thrusting pamphlets into your hand, you thrusting your pamphlet into other people’s hands, trying to figure out why Rumpelstiltskin keeps wearing his fake nose when his show finished……



Lano and Woodley are at the Thebarton Theatre, from Thursday to March 16.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So long and thanks for all the gags

Adelaide folks sure love their comedy. Fringe shows are starting to churn through plenty of tickets sales. However, comedy seems to be the favourite. And none of that highbrow stuff. The biggest-selling act of the Fringe so far is a couple of professional show-offs from Melbourne.

Yup, Lano & Woodley are enjoying a ticket-buying frenzy which is probably heightened by the fact it’s also their farewell tour.

However, Lano, aka Colin Lane, reckons that’s no need for audiences to rush to the show.

“How long do we have to be split up before we can do a reunion tour?” he asks. “Backstreet Boys took five to six years and John Farnham it was two weeks. So we’ll be somewhere in between”

The split will give the two comedians time to work on other passions. The other half, Frank Woodley, has been doing stand-up and getting into short films while Colin is into musical theatre.

Colin says people forget the duo has been together for 20 years.

“We’ve heard of comedy duos that don’t talk any more,” he says.

“It’s like a marriage but there’s no sex. So some would say it’s just like a marriage.”

Either way, both comedians want it to finish while they’re still friends.

“Out of all people in Lano & Woodley, Lano is in my two,” Colin says.

Their show opens Thursday, March 9 at Thebarton Theatre.

[rozymisty]

awww I realy want them to hurry up and come to Brisbane, though that means that it will be the 2nd last city.

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http://www.smh.com.au/news/entertain...e#contentSwap1

Lano and Woodley: parting of the wags

By Lenny Ann Low
February 25, 2006

The end is night: comedians Lano and Woodley anticipate their farewell tour.
Photo: Sahlan Hayes



After 20 years in an abusive relationship, comic duo Lano and Woodley are separating. Sort of, writes Lenny Ann Low.

It's an early sunny morning, perhaps a little too early for Colin Lane and Frank Woodley to be explaining why they're breaking up.

"It's all quite new and we haven't worked out what to say," says Woodley, who plays the rubbery-bodied, naive and accident-prone half of the Australian comedy duo known as Lano and Woodley. "OK ... imagine anybody you know, who you really, really like - a good friend who you respect and enjoy being around. Then imagine just spending 20 years with them, constantly."

Lane, who plays Woodley's domineering, over-confident other half, Lano, is smiling at his comedy partner. But his answer is more blunt: "See, I used to be a Frankophile because I loved everything Frank, but now I'm a Frankophobe. Sometimes he's too Frank, as in honest, but other times he's too Frank, as in a dickhead. So a lot of people say, 'Why are you splitting up?' and I go, 'Because he is a dickhead on stage,' which is great because there's lots of rubbery-limb kind of antics and 'Oh, he's being such a little fool' but, off-stage, he's the same sometimes. So, 'How do you come up with your ideas?' I just follow Frank around because he's a dickhead in real life. So, sometimes, that gets a little bit tiresome."

As Lane delivers this speech, deadpan, with his eyes wide and comically exasperated, Woodley laughs at every mention of the word "dickhead".

"You probably can't print this," Woodley says. "But there's this Richard Pryor joke where he says, 'I love my wife dearly and I believe in the sanctity of marriage and I have a great deal of respect for the sacred vows of matrimony. But, every morning, same motherf-----."'

"Because we've been sleeping together for the last 10 years," says Lane, deadpan again. "Which has kind of caused a few problems."

Lane is veering into character here but the pair's double-act status - goofy innocent in the little hat (Woodley) and pompous, controlling straight-man (Lano) - seems not a million miles from their off-stage personas. In their seven full-length live shows, mid-1990s TV series and countless TV guest appearances, the real-life symbiotic and caring friendship shines through, despite Lano's constant verbal and physical abuse of Woodley while in character. In real life, they tease and make each other laugh, finishing each other's sentences constantly.


"We like each other but I know him better than I know anybody in the world, and so there's not much that I can squeeze out of him any more," Lane says.

"It is like a married couple," says Woodley, who changed his name from Wood to Woodley six years ago to end confusion about his surname and stage name. "But we knew the cracks were forming when we'd get to an airport to book in and the person behind the counter would say, 'Look, I'm sorry but we can't sit you two together,' and we'd both go, 'That's OK."' Woodley mimics them laughing insanely. "That was sort of an indication. The manic, demented giggling attached to it as well. 'That's OK, aha ha aha ha ha."'

So, after 20 years, it's time to part. Hankering after new challenges, the Melbourne-based pair are farewelling their much-loved and critically acclaimed alter egos with a national Goodbye tour. Beginning in March at the Adelaide Fringe Festival and travelling to 37 cities and towns, the show will be a blend of Lane and Woodley's favourite stage moments and original material.

"And now that we can see the light at the end of the tunnel, we get on really well," Lane says. "It's true," confirms Woodley. "This is the most fun we've had in years."

Lane and Woodley met in 1986 while performing Theatresports in Melbourne. Lane had put his teaching degree on hold. Woodley was selling sandwiches and working in an Indian takeaway at the time. They formed a trio called Found Objects with fellow theatre performer Scott Casely, who left five years later. In 1993, the pair, now Lano and Woodley, won the Brian McCarthy Memorial Moosehead Award at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

A year later, much to their surprise, their show Fence won the prestigious Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, one of only two Australian acts to do so. Performing in a converted university meeting room, the pair's stage was a two-millimetre-thick sheet of masonite lying on the floor, their lighting operator was a backpacker who'd never entered a theatre and their audience were seated with sightlines stopping at the pair's chests.

"We did a push-ups joke where we got the people in the front rows to kneel down, the next few rows to sit, the next few rows to stand and the next rows to stand on their seats," Woodley says.

The award was unexpected and life-changing, but not entirely welcomed by some members of the British comedy scene and press. Some felt the Australian unknowns had unfairly snaffled the Oscar of the comedy world from British comics who had "paid their dues".


"I remember, at the Perrier party, going into the toilets and seeing all the other nominees [there]," Lane says. "And I didn't get a terrifically supportive look from them."

Woodley pipes up: "It might have just been English self-consciousness. You know, about being in a room where men all have their penises in their hands."

A year later, Working Title - maker of Four Weddings and a Funeral, Fargo and Bean - approached the pair with the idea of making a television series. Two years later, the first series of The Adventures Of Lano And Woodley, a co-production between Working Title and ABC TV, screened in Australia and Britain. It featured the duo living in a fictional suburban Melbourne flat and getting in and out of mostly very physical scrapes.

After a good response from critics and steady ratings, a second series was commissioned and screened in 1999. The Adventures Of Lano And Woodley became the first Australian show to be sold to the BBC. It was picked up in 38 other countries.

Although they were given the choice to make the series in England, Woodley and Lane confounded expectation and returned home. They know greater fame and success might have come if they had decided to live and work in Britain, but neither are too bothered. They have achieved what few Australian comics have: a self-written, 13-episode TV sitcom they feel proud of.

"It was an easy decision to make it in Australia, and not England, because that was where we lived and it was easy to make it here." Lane says. "We had complete creative control and I don't like London or England that much. And I didn't want to live there and I don't think Frank did, either."

Now the end is in sight, the "relief has started to well up", Lane says. The prospect of separate opportunities is exciting and frightening. Even so, they're still working on a feature film script together and don't discount meeting up for the odd small appearance. Woodley will continue making short films and performing his own stand-up, while Lane is musing about straight acting and, possibly, journalism. The future, though, is a long way off on the eve of six months spent saying goodbye.

"It is actually genuinely full-on for us that we're doing this," Woodley says. "It will be a very interesting emotional roller-coaster through the whole tour, but I haven't really thought about the final moment on stage."

"Me either," Lane says. "There could be tears."


"It could be a Roger Federer moment: getting your cup and turning to Col and crying," Woodley adds.

"It could just be completely anti-climactic or it could be quite emotional, I don't know," Lane says. "But you can't take yourself too seriously. I might just be a bit like Bert Newton, who, after the years of GMA [Good Morning Australia], couldn't go to the lunch. Maybe I might just not be able to go to the party that night because I'm too emotional."

"Yeah," Woodley says. "And everyone will just think that you went home because you didn't give a shit."

Lano and Woodley's Goodbye will be at Enmore Theatre from May 11. Tickets on sale from Monday. Bookings: 9550366, http://www.ticketek.com.au or 132849.

Quick questions

Career hight? Winning the Perrier Award in 1994.

Career low? Putting the set (a paling fence in three 2-x3-metre pieces) on our manager's car roof at 12.30am after the show and driving it to Manchester to do another show the next night. And paying £300 to get her car resprayed 'cause we didn't have roofracks.

Least-known talent? Colin can whistle through his ears. Frank can sing a piercing operatic high C note that has the power to shatter any illusions that he's got a good voice.

Credo? One moment's failure is the set-up for the next moment's punchline.

Epitaph? We got away with it.

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

Slapstick duo call on perfect timing to exit stage right
After 20 years on the road, Lano and Woodley have decided to call it quits, writes Fiona Scott-Norman


April 06, 2006



BREAKING up a creative partnership, especially one known and loved by the public, is always risky. Where would Laurel be without Hardy? Kath without Kim? Any of the Spice Girls without each other since girl power imploded like Mark Latham?

The sum is often greater than the parts and for at least one party it's obscurity, not a solo career, that beckons. What if, god forbid, it turns out you're Garfunkel instead of Simon?

Some acts keep going until death or scandal divide them (or in the case of Moomba clowns Zig and Zag, both), but most acts face the make-up or break-up decision many times in their career trajectory. Whether the thumb comes up or goes down depends on factors both personal and environmental.

Melbourne-based slapstick double act Lano and Woodley - also known as Colin Lane and Frank Woodley - have decided to call it quits after 20 years. They toyed with the idea of announcing that Frank had caught Colin playing straight guy to another comedian, but the reality is less explosive. After two decades together, which has included a television series, being the first Australian act to win the Edinburgh Fringe Festival Perrier award, several music CDs, and touring nationally and internationally to large, packed auditoriums, they are played out creatively.

"It's a more romantic than pragmatic decision," says Woodley, the physical, bendy one of the duo, who plays the bewildered naif to Lano's arrogant bluster.



http://[img]http://mercury.tiser...id=1[/img]




"We've loved doing this so much that we didn't want to become jaded. We felt there was a real risk that could happen. Our last show, The Island, was so huge and ambitious, and we couldn't imagine writing something that would follow it. We didn't want to keep repeating ourselves."

Another flashpoint for the duo that made them re-evaluate was the retirement of their manager, Michelle Wild. They had some high-powered meetings and talk was thrown around about cracking the overseas markets, but in the end it didn't ring true.

"You get fussier as you get older," Lane says. "We're too old to be sleeping on the manager's floor in his New York office and struggling for six months. There's a time in your life when that's completely fine, but we've passed that point."

Age doesn't necessarily have to weary partnerships, however. Simon Palomares and Nick Giannopoulos began as the Gibaldi Brothers 23 years ago, worked together on Wogs Out of Work and Acropolis Now, and during the past few years have re-formed as a strong touring cabaret partnership.

"We've spent a lot of time doing other things, which helps; we haven't got bored," says Palomares, who also has worked as a writer on a Spanish late-night chat show, directed Neighbours for a year and is launching a tabletop soccer TV show (on Melbourne community station Channel 31) with Giannopoulos this week.

"We get up on stage together and it's like we're the same brain. I'll start singing and he starts playing the guitar as though I'm playing it. I've performed with a lot of other people, but it's never as good.

"We were on tour a few years ago, in a hotel room, and I'm ironing my pants and he's sitting on the couch watching TV and I said, 'You realise we've been together longer than our two marriages combined?"'

Like the blonde thirtysomething secretary, the one thing that always gets named in a break-up is touring and its rigours. Lane and Woodley claim not to mind it too much, with Lane saying it's much better than going to work down a mineshaft. But Woodley admits they always do a little dance if a flight is overbooked and they can't be seated together.

"I don't think touring is incredibly taxing per se," says Lane, whose partner Marnie is pregnant with their second child, "because you see a lot of Australia that you wouldn't otherwise see and I've always enjoyed hotels from when I was a little boy.

"But I'd like to not be trying to explain the fiscal nature of the world to my five-year-old son when he says, 'Daddy, you've only been home for two days, why are you leaving again?', and I'm saying, 'Well son, we have to amortise our touring costs."'

The problem with calling it quits, of course, is that everyone wants to know what you're going to do next. "I really don't know," Lane says. "I look forward to being in the glorious position of not having to do anything. It's funny, I wasn't worried about the future at all until I spoke to my mum - not that I want to go into a diatribe about other people's expectations - but it was only when she said: 'Surely you've thought about what you're doing next', that I thought: 'Oh, what the f--- am I going to do?"'

Lane is tossing up between teaching children drama, opening a restaurant in Perth or selling his house and moving to Italy until the money runs out, but neither he nor Woodley are finding it easy to consider what the future will hold. They may be parting ways, but their final show, a best-of called Goodbye, isn't until September in Perth and they both find it difficult and somewhat unseemly to ruminate too much.

"For one thing, we're having a wonderful time," says Woodley, who did his first solo stand-up show a couple of years ago. "It feels a bit weird, a bit rude, to talk about breaking up. It's like we're in the middle of a divorce, and I'm saying, 'Well, there's a girl down the greengrocers who I've been flirting with a bit. I reckon once this is over I'll get together with her.' I think we're both intending to stay in comedy in some form or other, although when I was a kid I wanted to be either one of the Goodies or Harry Butler, so you never know, I might start growing that beard."

Other concerns that affect an act such as Lano and Woodley, with their reliance on slapstick, physical comedy - and in the case of Woodley, lissom elasticity - are ageing and wear and tear. Woodley says he can't keep doing what he's doing forever.

"I've been watching those documentaries on stem cell research with great interest," Woodley says. He's renowned for throwing himself around the stage like a deranged rubber band. "I'm hoping they can grow me some new knees. I can't do the childlike recklessness like I used to. In part of the show we get the audience up to hold out a big tarpaulin and I leap into it from the top of the lighting grid. I never used to care before, but a little part of me is afraid now."

Shane Dundas, one-half of the hugely successful physical duo the Umbilical Brothers, says they've veered towards breaking up several times but have kept themselves fresh by embracing other projects: last year the Umbies made an interactive board game and a children's TV show for Nickelodeon. He says he respects Lano and Woodley for knowing when to go.

"I think it's a really brave thing to split when you know what you've got works really well," Dundas says.

"I applaud them for making that leap. What's the point of going on if you can't go on into some new footprints?"

As Woodley says: "In the end, breaking up is exactly the same as performing; it's all about the timing." Lano and Woodley: Goodbye, Simon and George Live at the Palms and the Umbilical Brothers appear at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, April12-May 7.

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http://www.examiner.com.au/story.asp?id=337339

Comedy duo says goodbye to fans
By SOPHIE FOWLER , Thursday, 6 April 2006


It took almost 10 minutes for Nic Roach's celebrity guests to answer his first question on Launceston College's radio station LCFM yesterday.

Comedians Lano and Woodley were Mr Roach's first interviewees and were not about to take it easy on the rookie announcer.

In Launceston as part of their final Good Bye tour of 37 Australian cities, the infamous duo of Colin Lane and Frank Woodley made a special appearance at the college before their final show at the Princess Theatre, and chatted at length with Mr Roach.

Well, they chatted and he listened.

The 17-year-old's question about why the duo was splitting up was met with a barrage of answers, all of which were dubious but none of which weren't rib ticklers.

"Frank had an affair with my wife," Lano said.

"It all went a bit Wayne Carey.

"I'm Wayne Carey and Frank's the Stevens guy.

"No, he didn't have an affair with my wife, we had an affair with each other."

For a split second, a serious answer looked to be coming, but hopes were quickly dashed.

"We should tell you why we're really splitting up," Woodley began.

"What happened was when John Howard brought in the new industrial relations laws, Col sacked me.

"He wanted to re-employ me but at a far lower rate of pay."

Back to the drawing board.

The pair eventually indulged their host and confessed that they were hanging up their funny pants because after 20 years in the industry, they wanted to try something else.

"We just want to do some other stuff," Woodley said.

"Lano and Woodley On Ice perhaps," Lano suggested.

"The arena spectacular."

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http://www.smh.com.au/news/arts-revi...521244382.html

It's an early sunny morning, perhaps a little too early for Colin Lane and Frank Woodley to be explaining why they're breaking up.

"It's all quite new and we haven't worked out what to say," says Woodley, who plays the rubbery-bodied, naive and accident-prone half of the Australian comedy duo known as Lano and Woodley. "OK ... imagine anybody you know, who you really, really like - a good friend who you respect and enjoy being around. Then imagine just spending 20 years with them, constantly."

Lane, who plays Woodley's domineering, over-confident other half, Lano, is smiling at his comedy partner. But his answer is more blunt: "See, I used to be a Frankophile because I loved everything Frank, but now I'm a Frankophobe. Sometimes he's too Frank, as in honest, but other times he's too Frank, as in a dickhead. So a lot of people say, 'Why are you splitting up?' and I go, 'Because he is a dickhead on stage,' which is great because there's lots of rubbery-limb kind of antics and 'Oh, he's being such a little fool' but, off-stage, he's the same sometimes. So, 'How do you come up with your ideas?' I just follow Frank around because he's a dickhead in real life. So, sometimes, that gets a little bit tiresome."

As Lane delivers this speech, deadpan, with his eyes wide and comically exasperated, Woodley laughs at every mention of the word "dickhead".

"You probably can't print this," Woodley says. "But there's this Richard Pryor joke where he says, 'I love my wife dearly and I believe in the sanctity of marriage and I have a great deal of respect for the sacred vows of matrimony. But, every morning, same motherf-----."'

"Because we've been sleeping together for the last 10 years," says Lane, deadpan again. "Which has kind of caused a few problems."

Lane is veering into character here but the pair's double-act status - goofy innocent in the little hat (Woodley) and pompous, controlling straight-man (Lano) - seems not a million miles from their off-stage personas. In their seven full-length live shows, mid-1990s TV series and countless TV guest appearances, the real-life symbiotic and caring friendship shines through, despite Lano's constant verbal and physical abuse of Woodley while in character. In real life, they tease and make each other laugh, finishing each other's sentences constantly.

"We like each other but I know him better than I know anybody in the world, and so there's not much that I can squeeze out of him any more," Lane says.

"It is like a married couple," says Woodley, who changed his name from Wood to Woodley six years ago to end confusion about his surname and stage name. "But we knew the cracks were forming when we'd get to an airport to book in and the person behind the counter would say, 'Look, I'm sorry but we can't sit you two together,' and we'd both go, 'That's OK."' Woodley mimics them laughing insanely. "That was sort of an indication. The manic, demented giggling attached to it as well. 'That's OK, aha ha aha ha ha."'

So, after 20 years, it's time to part. Hankering after new challenges, the Melbourne-based pair are farewelling their much-loved and critically acclaimed alter egos with a national Goodbye tour. Beginning in March at the Adelaide Fringe Festival and travelling to 37 cities and towns, the show will be a blend of Lane and Woodley's favourite stage moments and original material.

"And now that we can see the light at the end of the tunnel, we get on really well," Lane says. "It's true," confirms Woodley. "This is the most fun we've had in years."

Lane and Woodley met in 1986 while performing Theatresports in Melbourne. Lane had put his teaching degree on hold. Woodley was selling sandwiches and working in an Indian takeaway at the time. They formed a trio called Found Objects with fellow theatre performer Scott Casely, who left five years later. In 1993, the pair, now Lano and Woodley, won the Brian McCarthy Memorial Moosehead Award at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

A year later, much to their surprise, their show Fence won the prestigious Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, one of only two Australian acts to do so. Performing in a converted university meeting room, the pair's stage was a two-millimetre-thick sheet of masonite lying on the floor, their lighting operator was a backpacker who'd never entered a theatre and their audience were seated with sightlines stopping at the pair's chests.

"We did a push-ups joke where we got the people in the front rows to kneel down, the next few rows to sit, the next few rows to stand and the next rows to stand on their seats," Woodley says.

The award was unexpected and life-changing, but not entirely welcomed by some members of the British comedy scene and press. Some felt the Australian unknowns had unfairly snaffled the Oscar of the comedy world from British comics who had "paid their dues".

"I remember, at the Perrier party, going into the toilets and seeing all the other nominees [there]," Lane says. "And I didn't get a terrifically supportive look from them."


Woodley pipes up: "It might have just been English self-consciousness. You know, about being in a room where men all have their penises in their hands."

A year later, Working Title - maker of Four Weddings and a Funeral, Fargo and Bean - approached the pair with the idea of making a television series. Two years later, the first series of The Adventures Of Lano And Woodley, a co-production between Working Title and ABC TV, screened in Australia and Britain. It featured the duo living in a fictional suburban Melbourne flat and getting in and out of mostly very physical scrapes.

After a good response from critics and steady ratings, a second series was commissioned and screened in 1999. The Adventures Of Lano And Woodley became the first Australian show to be sold to the BBC. It was picked up in 38 other countries.

Although they were given the choice to make the series in England, Woodley and Lane confounded expectation and returned home. They know greater fame and success might have come if they had decided to live and work in Britain, but neither are too bothered. They have achieved what few Australian comics have: a self-written, 13-episode TV sitcom they feel proud of.

"It was an easy decision to make it in Australia, and not England, because that was where we lived and it was easy to make it here." Lane says. "We had complete creative control and I don't like London or England that much. And I didn't want to live there and I don't think Frank did, either."

Now the end is in sight, the "relief has started to well up", Lane says. The prospect of separate opportunities is exciting and frightening. Even so, they're still working on a feature film script together and don't discount meeting up for the odd small appearance. Woodley will continue making short films and performing his own stand-up, while Lane is musing about straight acting and, possibly, journalism. The future, though, is a long way off on the eve of six months spent saying goodbye.

"It is actually genuinely full-on for us that we're doing this," Woodley says. "It will be a very interesting emotional roller-coaster through the whole tour, but I haven't really thought about the final moment on stage."

"Me either," Lane says. "There could be tears."

"It could be a Roger Federer moment: getting your cup and turning to Col and crying," Woodley adds.

"It could just be completely anti-climactic or it could be quite emotional, I don't know," Lane says. "But you can't take yourself too seriously. I might just be a bit like Bert Newton, who, after the years of GMA [Good Morning Australia], couldn't go to the lunch. Maybe I might just not be able to go to the party that night because I'm too emotional."

"Yeah," Woodley says. "And everyone will just think that you went home because you didn't give a shit."

[unfrufru]

http://www.theage.com.au/news/arts-r...916577064.html

It's your last chance to see these classic comedians at work.

Lano and Woodley: calling it quits.





GenreComedyLocationHer Majesty's TheatreAddress219 Exhibition St, MelbourneDate18 April 2006 to 6 May 2006Tickets$34-$37 ($29.90 Tue)Phone Bookings132 849Online Bookingswww.ticketek.com.auDetails7.30pm.
COMEDY FESTIVAL REVIEW

AFTER 20 years together, performing at home and around the world, comedy duo Colin Lane and Frank Woodley are back for one final show. It's a fitting farewell.

The pair are consummate clowns and the prospect of their parting is likely to bring a tear to the eye during the month of hilarity that is the International Comedy Festival.

Their style is difficult to describe concisely because it runs the gamut of available gags, combining physical comedy and pratfalls, stand-up and musical hijinks, visual effects, mime, and general larking about.

They're as full of jerks and quirks as the king of comedy, Jerry Lewis, and own a bit of Chaplin's faux-naivety; their trademark bickering is a mongrel breed - half Punch and Judy, half the Odd Couple.

We're barely two minutes into Lano and Woodley's Goodbye when the war resumes, with the comedians asking straight out who the audience likes best. The first act sees them vying for the favour of the crowd and playing any dirty trick to get ahead.

Indeed, the mock-contest substitutes for some of the jokes to become the main attraction. One sketch about the Great Wall doesn't even get to the first line; the two fight for 15 minutes between the introduction of a silent film skit and its performance.

But seeing Lano and Woodley in action is always a pleasure. They are such seasoned comedians that almost every muscle they move is funny, and even when things move hair-raisingly off-script, the audience is left wondering whether what seemed to be improvisation was in fact planned.

The second half is a reprise of some of their greatest hits: an absurd shadow-boxing competition, the indelibly amusing love song I picked onya, Sonya, Woodley being caught in a fireman's blanket after falling from the rafters. At their best, they'll make you laugh until your eyes water.

If you're a Lano and Woodley fan, you'll find this show a great balance between your favourite material and a new bag of tricks. If you're one of the few who haven't seen them yet, get in now. It's your last chance to see these classic comedians at work.