Comedy Show Nominee Trygve Wakenshaw Shines

The “angular New Zealander” Trygve Wakenshaw, who was nominated for best show at this year’s Foster’s Edinburgh Comedy awards, “has the audience in raptures with his wonky physical comedy – and a brilliantly inventive finale”, the Guardian’s Brian Logan says in a review of Nautilus, a follow up to the mime star’s 2014 hit show, Kraken.

“There’s nothing new under the sun, they say, so maybe this has been seen before. But the simple trick Trygve Wakenshaw pulls at the end of his show Nautilus – instantly, wonderfully subversive of mime convention – is a new one on me,” Logan writes.

“Suffice to say, it makes a blissfully funny finale to a strong 80 minutes of silent comedy.

“It struck me what a fine time this is to be a (good) mime artist, as a whole generation encounters what must seem – as it emerges from decades of chronic uncoolness – like an extraordinary new way to be funny. In Dr Brown’s absence, Wakenshaw – bleached hair, thrift-store suit – is its hip new icon.

“The merest twist of his lean, angular body into another wonky shape – now hopping like a bird, now wriggling like a caterpillar – has his crowd purring with delight.

“Happily, there’s more to the New Zealander’s show than that, as he splices together several improbable scenarios, and sets them spinning off in clown-logic directions.

“Skill, practise and off-beam humour combine to produce richly daft cartoons of saloon-bar goofballs and swimming messiahs. And then there’s that closing coup de mime, which mainlines the kind of funny you get when not just the rug but the whole floor and foundations are pulled right out from under you.”

Original article by Brian Logan, The Guardian, August 28, 2015.