Comedy Review - Tim Muller "Laugh Now, Google Later" - May 2017

By Megan Blackwell

Artist: Tim Muller

Date/Venue: Friday May 12th - 13th & 19th-20th, 2017 - The Vault at Q Theatre, Auckland

This festival marks Muller’s first solo show. In previous festivals he has been a part of the Wash Your Mouth Out shows. These have been showcases of comedians coming together to create clean comedy. Laugh Now, Google Later is smart and smut free, and encourages the audience to think.

By day Muller is a scientist. This couldn’t be clearer as the show focuses on critical thinking and mentally unpicking everyday social norms and assumptions. Muller approaches the audience as like minded intellectuals. His warm up is a group smiling experiment to demonstrate his point. You definitely don’t want your mind to wander, it felt like everything was going to be on some vital test afterwards.

The show covers everything from Muller’s life to orangutans; from marshmallows to pi (𝛑); and from the robot takeover to injecting feminism into fairy tales. His audience interaction takes the form of assigning a Google fact checker and his personally invented game: Joke Roulette - a quirky demonstration of the sheer volume of joke writing he does. How much you ask? A baby bathtubful, that’s how much. While the show has some pacing issues, Muller’s deliberately stilted delivery keeps the laughs coming. He still throws back to his signature style of complicated and impressive tongue twisters, and has a grand finale that nods to his musical comedy. So, if you demand more than the S, F & C words, or gratuitously descriptive sex jokes from your comedy this is the show for you.