Judith Lucy is touring Sydney again, making the most of her annus horribilis. She tells reporter IAN HORNER about her new show and how she copes when things go wrong on stage.
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ooOOooh, she says with her trademark drawn-out rise-and-fall — as much her take on Ocker exhalation as it is a comic’s drawn-out pause to set up her words.
Judith Lucy’s droll delivery, on stage or during this interview, is deceptively laidback. She works very hard at making it appear casual, but her thoughts are well-considered, occasionally piercing.
On the back of her recent ABC TV show, Judith Lucy is All Woman (now on DVD), she’s talking up her current tour, Ask No Questions of the Moth, for which the media release exclaimed:
The good news is her last year really sucked. A truly awful year for Judith always leads to a great show for her fans and 2014 was magnificently terrible.
- 'Ask No Questions of the Moth' media release
That was worth exploring but first up we asked the obvious.
What on earth has a moth got to do with it?
Frankly, your guess is as good as mine, Ian. Underneath all the cheap gags, I guess, if the show does have a little theme it’s about change and impairment so I kinda wanted to capture that with a title that was ridiculous and mystifying and, hopefully, sounded a bit funny and also made me sound a lot deeper than I actually am.
I’m disappointed you didn’t recognise it’s a quote from the 12th century mystic poem, The Conference of the Birds [by Persian-born Abū Ḥamīd bin Abū Bakr Ibrāhīm, pen name Farid ud-Din Attar, whose writing got him banished for heresy].
I have no news of my coming or passing away – The whole thing happened quicker than a breath; Ask no questions of the moth.
- Farid ud-Din Attar (c 1110-1221)
And, look, it was a good excuse for me to pop on a moth costume and look really hot on the poster.
So last year sucked which makes for a great show. It’s true, we don’t laugh at good fortune but we revel in others’ misfortunes.
ooOOooh. We all do it. And comedians are stupid enough to actually do it for a career. Who wants to go along and hear a comedian say they’re in love and life’s terrific?! Rest assured, you won’t be hearing that from me.
Though I do mention in the show I’m currently in a relationship and generally when I say that the audience applauds. Which makes me very happy — and sad.
How so?
Happy because it makes me think the audience actually cares about me. Sad because they think my having a partner is unusual. Like it’s a miracle!
Judith plugs the show on live radio . . .
How tightly scripted are your shows?
Very! I’m not going to pretend I get up there and it all comes off the top of my head. It simply doesn’t. My theory has always been if I spend a lot of time writing a joke and it works then it’s a good idea to keep using it because people have paid money to see me and the contract is they pay money and I try to make them laugh.
Nothing makes me happier than going off script and that’s one of the reasons I always like talking with the audience. But I always have a script to come back to.
The trick, of course, is to deliver it so it appears off the cuff.
It’s like acting. I saw Seinfeld talk about it. He said you discover the perfect timing for a joke and then you try to replicate it every night. He said it’s like you’re doing an impersonation of yourself every night. You’re trying to hit those marks.
Marvellous musical mash-up theme from her TV show, Judith Lucy is All Woman . . .
You’re doing two shows back to back, 5pm then 7pm. It’s one thing to deliver it once on the day but then to repeat it two hours later.
weeEEeell, I guess I’ve been doing it a very long time. There’s no denying that at the end of that second show, God, you wanna fall over and have a drink. Or have a drink first and then fall over.
But they have quite different energies when you do the two shows. Earlier audiences are more subdued and later audiences have had a couple more drinks. Whenever you’re flagging you tend to get energy from the audience.
Yes, it’s tiring, but it’s certainly not a problem. Let’s face it, by the time you get to the second show you really don’t give a shit and that kind of frees you up.
Are there times when things during a show catch you off-guard?
I was in Brisbane and we had to stop the show. My manager had to walk on stage and whisper in my ear and I had to tell a woman there had been a terrible accident with her son and she had to go home immediately. You can imagine that just brought the audience and myself down.
What was really infuriating was when I discovered after the show that the son’s accident was that he’d hit himself in the head with a yoyo and was completely fine! We were imagining some horrific car accident!
It's hard to recover from that!
As long as you own it, it’s fine. Like if you go ‘‘God, that brought everybody down!’’ then people just exhale. When there’s a mistake on stage or a stuffup if you say ‘‘God, that was a mistake’’ audiences are very kind. It’s only if you pretend nothing’s wrong you lose them. ❏
■ Civic Theatre, Newcastle | Saturday, July 18 (7.30pm)
■ Enmore Theatre, Newtown | Friday, July 31 (7.30pm) and Saturday, August 1 (5pm, 7pm)
■ Concourse Theatre, Chatswood | Sunday, August 2 (6.30pm)
■ Tickets | Ticketek
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