Etymologically speaking, the word ’smorgasbord’ is a back-formation of the word ‘Smorgy’s’, which is used to describe all-you-can-eat buffet-style restaurants. By extension, Smorgasbord is a buffet-style comedy show, serving up a selection of skits, stand-up, films and songs from behind the sneeze guard. Unfortunately, like the food at Smorgy’s, the comedy at Smorgasbord is somewhat lacking in nutritional value.

The main problem is the delivery. Lead comedian Dave Ryan needs to bone up on his vocal skills, and his sidekick Diane Armstrong sounded terribly over-rehearsed and stilted. The show made use of an AV projector, which was left on ‘pause’ during the live action, filling the room with a low-pitched hum at all times. Some of the parodies were a bit outdated or obscure, and Armstrong’s jokes became quite gross towards the end. All up, I got the feeling that Ryan and Armstrong had gotten a bit ahead of themselves and put on a show before they were really ready.

Which is a shame because there was some promising material in there that would have fared better in more experienced hands. Some of the filmed sketches were quite amusing, albeit with terrible production values – muffled sound and bad camera angles. With Melbourne overflowing with film students, surely they could have found someone with the right equipment and technical skills? It got me wondering, if perhaps the folks at Jim’s Comedians might be better off concentrating on writing comedy and franchise out the performing to someone else.

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