The Pun

Porthole into the Minds of the Vanquished

By Brianna Summers ⋅ April 27, 2006 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

If you’ve ever considered therapeutic surgery to overcome your low self-esteem, or caught your arm in the fridge door of a car door’you’re probably a bit weird. You will also probably love A Porthole into the Minds of the Vanquished. Three men, a keyboard, and a host of sound effects expel a truly twisted, black sense of humour as they calmly but deliberately dissect the consumer culture status quo.

Borrowing from TV gameshows, advertising, news bulletins, talkback radio and magazine horoscopes, Porthole woos its complacent audience before pulling an oversized metaphorical rug from under them. The show exploits common expectations to comic effect, distorting reality into something gruesome and absurd. The actors slide seamlessly between character roles, reporting ‘news’ like the world’s first reverse birth, before collapsing into a pair of sycophantic and masochistic clairvoyants. The sheer insanity of the dialogue, coupled with the duo’s poker-faced delivery, is so wonderfully ridiculous and unsettling you’ll find yourself simultaneously laughing, grimacing and shaking your head.

As the world’s first comedy show devised via SMS, Porthole moves swiftly, leaving little time to fully digest each moment of hilarity for future regurgitation; you may find yourself hankering for a transcript after the curtains have closed. The jokes that do linger will inspire sleepless nights, as you ponder whether ‘If you had one anxiety kitten, and you swapped it for two urinary budgies, would you be sick, or well’? The answer: well.