By Kipp Lee
Sorry, Maybe, Please, If Possible is Zoë Sitas’ completely improvised stand up show. She jokes that if you want a completely polished show to please leave – but please don’t, I promise you won’t be disappointed!
The show opens each night with a different comedian doing a ten-minute set to warm up the audience for Sitas, with Amelia Navascues the night I attended. Navascues’s dry sense of humour contrasted nicely with Sitas’ bubbly personality, but with a cohesive thread of honesty and vulnerability connecting the two comics.
Zoë comes out swinging with some pressing matters that she just has to tell the audience about before explaining the premise of the show – all improvised, completely fresh content – if it works, we all have a good chuckle, if it doesn’t, we throw it out and never talk about it again! Sitas is comfortable in front of the crowd and has them immediately on side with her natural charm. She pulls out a stack of index cards, with suggestions she took from her Instagram audience (please follow her @zoesitas) some of which she pursues, others of which she throws away in disgust.
Zoë Sitas is at ease with her audience and tries to put them at ease as well, knowing how nerve-wracking it is to be in the front row of an improv show -and the Terminal is 50% front row. She tries for some audience interaction and laughs it off when it fails as the couple she’s targeting have been together since “before the apps” - “It’s been a while? Is that a new app I haven’t heard about?”
Before the night ends, Sitas touches on the title of the show and how she’s noticed that when writing more serious emails she tries to assuage her message with these platitudes. She also does this throughout the night, whenever she covers more personal and vulnerable material she shies away and kind of, maybe, I don’t know.
Sometimes it felt like Sitas was struggling to fill the time, often falling back on previous jokes that worked but each time the audience felt that “oh now they’ve forgotten their lines” tension, Zoë picked us back up and sends us down a new line of completely new material and we learn she’s in love with her GP, or her Yiayia’s tricks for keeping regular, or how her two-thirds of a nursing degree will save us all.
Sitas in unapologetic in her chaotic energy, bouncing from one joke to another quicker than you can dissolve that Metamucil sachet. The show covered everything, from asthma attacks to business men on scooters and the need to bring back spinning tops in chip packets. Be prepared for some wholesome content or some more content about poo (“Metamucil, fibre, I’m constipated!”). It’s going to be different each night, but knowing Zoë, it’s going to be great each time. You can catch her 7pm Saturday 28th at the Factory Theatre.
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All opinions and thoughts expressed within reviews on Theatre Travels are those of the writer and not of the company at large.