Andrew McClelland's Mix Tape (C-90 Edition)

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2006
Andrew McClelland's Mix Tape (C-90 Edition)
Australian Comedy Management
29 September 2006
Festival Hub, Czech House

Andrew McClelland is totally delightful. I’d pop his tape into my cassette player anytime. Andrew McClelland’s Mix Tape sold out at the 2006 Melbourne International Comedy Festival. This is the special Fringe extended (C90) edition. If you’ve ever used a song to try and impress someone, see this show. 

Mix Tape is all about our love of music and the soundtrack it gives our lives. The mix tape may be a rough and almost antiquated art form, but it requires so much more skill and finesse than making a folder of mp3 files. Like the mix tape, the show selects some of the best “tracks” of stand up comedy and combines them into a personal and irresistible format. It’s not slick and commercial. It’s personal and fun, made even better by its flaws.

McClelland and director Alan Brough (from the ABC’s Spicks & Specks) really know their music. The tape includes Sesame Street hits, jazz, gangster rap, Australian urban pop and, the very densely complicated genre; metal.

This show speaks perfectly to its chosen audience - 30 something, live in Melbourne’s inner north, university educated and listened to far too many records or CDs as a teenager. However McClelland’s engaging personality has a much broader appeal. This tape is enjoyable even if the only ghetto blaster you have seen is in your parents’ photo album, or if you think M&M is spelt correctly and even if you don’t know why “summer of the 17th dole payment” is a very funny lyric.

Mixed Tape naturally finishes with a sing along that everyone in the audience joined in. However, we did have to sing a Monkees parody, because Michael Jackson won’t let us sing The Beatles.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.