YEP. Bron Lewis.
Smith's Alternative Bookshop. June 30 2022
Reviewed by Peter Wilkins
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| Bron Lewis presents YEP |
Smith’s Alternative Bookshop is the perfect venue to showcase the wild wit and crackerjack comedy of stand up comedian Bron Lewis. The intimate and eccentric venue with its eclectic collection of paraphernalia and the sassy and smart Lewis are a perfect fit. Stand up comedy can be like dodging duck pooh on a slippery path. It’s too easy to slip and land on your bum in the muck. If the laugh isn’t there in the first ten seconds, then facing the crowd on stage on your own can be like hitting a wall of stony silence. For 2022 National Raw winner Lewis and with rave reviews for her award-winning show YEP from Brisbane to Sydney to Adelaide under her belt red-lipped redhead Lewis is right on the mark from the moment she enters. No fear here. A look, a glance and a Here I Am stance and Lewis has the audience on her side. She is safe to target the front row stooges and pick those in the Canberra crowd who moved away and came back to raise their kids for the grandparents to mind for a pack of failures.
Canberra-raised Lewis knows her audience. She is one of them and she knows how far she can push before pulling back or changing tack. Her routine speaks to anyone who had to tackle Covid with jibes at absent Scomo and Mum Anastasia. Poor Glad and her choice of Daryl from Wagga comes in for a serve, after having sussed out that she is among friends of her political persuasion. Lewis is adroit. She quickly susses out her audience and keeps the laughs coming as she takes a well-aimed cynical swipe at the the stupid and the absurd. Stand up comedy is the satirist’s companion and Lewis takes her scalpel of derision to slice at any sign of superiority or elitism. Lewis is a comedian with an acute awareness of her audience. Like any artist her weapon of choice is identification and Lewis quickly has her audience bending over with laughter because their experience is at the core of her every topic and carefully measured attitude and posture. The woman in the front row might have wished that she’d never admitted to having wedding photos taken (Did she look like a “dugong in a nightie?) Lewis and her partner and the father of her three kids (Isn’t everybody’s favourite the middle one and not the eight year old who wants to be a “massive bitch” when she grows up?) are in a de facto relationship. What a de facto term that is! Pregnancy gets a serve and that leads to the topic of vasectomy and her idiot, smart husband and his self-pitying walk down the corridor after he succumbed to the snip “That was a waste of $580 because I’ll never have sex with him again” Lewis quips.
Lewis is an impersonation warrior switching character and attitude in an instant. Whether mocking poor Glad, chucking a Mum Stack, impersonating her kid’s teacher, Debra and the Bento Box saga or slapping the preparatory primer on the face Lewis works with familiar experience and makes it an unique target for her comedic talent. Her timing is excellent; her poker face moments a pause for the laughs to build before moving on. She plays her audience like a dart board, hurling the gags and scoring a bullseye.
In her one hour stand up comedy routine she describes the different YEPS. There is the YEP enthusiastic, the YEP indifferent and the YEP cautionary. There’s the Sure, let’s do it!! YEP To the I’m not sue I should but what the heck YEP to the I wish I’d never agreed to this YEP. If you ever get a chance to see this witty, funny, brave and daring comedian, say YEP with a capital Y, a capital E and a capital P. YEP is a capital show to see.
