Preview
KING O’ FUN (AND OTHER STORIES)
Written and performed by Andy Jones
Directed by Charlie Tomlinson
Presented as part of the High Performance Rodeo
Runs January 16 and 17
Big Secret Theatre (Epcor Centre)
It’s two in the afternoon in Newfoundland, and comedian Andy Jones is exhausted.
His one-man show, King O’ Fun (And Other Stories), opened on December 7 at the LSPU Hall in St. John’s and he’s been going non-stop ever since. He will perform King O’ Fun at One Yellow Rabbit’s High Performance Rodeo on January 16 and 17 in the Big Secret Theatre.
For now, he’s taken a minute out of his rehearsal schedule to find a payphone in the basement of the Arts and Culture Centre in St. John’s to keep a scheduled phone interview. He sounds drained.
"We had a smaller audience last night because there was a snow storm," explains Jones. "When there are only 40 people in the audience, you have to work much harder. There’s no one to fall back on in a one-man show."
Jones’s style could be described as manic. When he’s onstage, the audience is transported into his imagination. His antics, his comedy and his presence are all high energy. No wonder he’s tired. Not to mention the stress of putting together a solo show.
"It’s not so much the performing, it’s the fear during the day that you’re going to blow it that night," he says.
Jones is well known in Canada as a member of the legendary Newfoundland comedy troupe Codco. He has been in a number of movies, including Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy and Rare Birds, and is the recipient of two Gemini awards and an Emmy nomination. Jones has also written five one-man comedy shows, which he has toured across Canada, the U.K. and Ireland. This will be his third visit to Calgary’s winter Rodeo.
Jones originally performed King O’ Fun in 1997, but has added new material and reworked some of it for new audiences.
This latest version is an 80-minute extravaganza of highly charged antics as Jones attempts to re-create the funniest moment in Western civilization (as reported to him by a German tourist) as well as explore the "Whisgiggin Dimension."
Come again?
From the Dictionary of Newfoundland English: "Whisgiggin – …To lark about. Boisterous, silly laughing; engaging in foolish actions."
Imagine the feeling of laughing so hard your face hurts. Laughing at something that seems so funny, you can’t get it out of your head and everything else around seems to set off the laughter as well.
"I love that word, whisgiggin. It’s like when you’re a kid and you’re laughing through your hands and the whole world seems funny," says Jones. "When you’re an adult, you never laugh like that again."
So from Jones’s imagination came the Whisgiggin Dimension. It all sounds hilarious and even a little bizarre, but there’s a message behind his humour. Through the laughs, he’s exploring something much more serious.
"It’s a basic human thing, to think that there must be somewhere else, some other dimension," explains Jones. "I’ve always thought the saddest thing about life is death, to think that you’ll never see those people again. You want to think there is another dimension."
The play also explores what Jones calls the "burden of the comedian." It no doubt comes with the territory of being a comedian that wherever you go people will ask you to be funny, do silly things and entertain them.
"You have to start being funny at 8 p.m. and then you have to stop at 10 p.m.," says Jones. "It’s a forced thing, in a way."
Not that Jones doesn’t love every minute of it -- he admits to being caught whisgigging once or twice in his youth. He and fellow Codco member Greg Malone went to school together, and Jones says they were always doing comedy in school and constantly getting in trouble for it. But is being truly silly really only something that the young can experience?
"The construct of society is phony and kids see through it," says Jones. "You can’t help but laugh and, at that moment, it’s as if you’re free to travel anywhere in time and space. Only kids could slip through the Whisgiggin Dimension."
But in King O’ Fun, the adult Jones is offered a chance to explore funny moments and another dimension. The intriguing synopsis for the play suggests that both have something to do with a rooster puppet, a voice-activated prosthetic leg, some sort of shitting pig, and Jones’s prerequisite jabs at the Catholic Church.
Jones describes the show as playful. He says the play is tons of fun, but it has a bit of a bite to it.
"I guarantee 250 laughs or your money back," he says. "Although no one has taken me up on it yet." |
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