Award-winning comedian James Donald Forbes McCann debuts his new show 'McCann-dle In The Wind' to a hometown audience at Adelaide Fringe Festival before heading over to Sydney Comedy Festival.
With the iconic Fringe Festival commencing in February and James' show playing throughout March, at this point James is very much like the wind-blown candle in his title – unsure which direction he'll be thrown next.
“The show has nothing to do with the title,” James says.
“You write the title for these things like four months out and so you think 'I better go with a good pun'. It's about a couple of things: I would say it concerns politics but it's not really a political show. The biggest bit at the moment is about when I worked in a call centre and the weird insanity of that.”
Few jobs appeal less than call centre work and James agrees, but says the worst part of the job isn't the vitriol of deranged unsatisfied customers, but not being able to properly help them.
“You'd think the worst thing about working in a call centre would be people calling up and going 'stuff you, I know where you work and I'm coming to bash you', and that's not great, but the worst is getting desensitised to not helping people,” he says.
“There are all these jobs in the world where when you do them you have to become a worse person somehow. The only way to help people in a call centre is to treat them like cattle and not care about them.”
James is also the creator of hit festival shows 'Wolf Creek: The Musical' and 'The Sound Of Nazis' and he'll be bringing the same calibre of performance and entertainment to 'McCann-dle In The Wind'.
“The things I did last year I hadn't done before in a solo show,” he says.
“There were songs and poetry and weird narrative bits, so that's the goal for this one. Part of achieving that is that anyone can get up at the microphone and tell stories about their life for an hour, but I want it to be razzle-dazzle excitement.
“There's music, there are low-key fireworks – just a proper good night of entertainment. You don’t have to have seen me ever before to get this show but what it is is the single greatest evening of stand-up comedy that anyone has ever seen in their lives.”
Though James is keen to create more glorious musical theatre satire, he admits to being a little stumped for ideas for the time being.
“I started making 'Macbeth' into a musical and then I was gripped by the horror of being one of those people that tries to make Shakespeare cool for kids, and I just hated myself so I stopped. If you've got any ideas for a musical you tell me and I'll do it. I want to make 'Die Hard' into a musical so bad.”
In dealing with an oppressive PC culture as a comedian, James seems to think the best way to avoid a fall, is to lean into it.
“What would be great is if one person came to my show and took a video of me out of context and have a lot of people hate me online,” he laughs. “I feel that's the way to get success these days, but it never happens.”
