Created by Michael Galligan

Review by Christian Maddock

The humble banana is often regarded as one of the more mundane fruits, it being so cheap and readily available. However, this show manages to inject a sense of life, zaniness and occasionally, panic, into the world’s most-popular yellow fruit.

The show opens to a techno beat with crazy frog and minion laughter remixed into the track. Michael Galligan, Banana’s wonderful star, misses their cue to run on stage and the song had to be played again – whether this was intentional or unintentional, it was certainly amusing and good preparation for the oncoming hour of absurdity.

Once onstage, Galligan proceeds to reveal his identity, at which point the clown show truly begins. He trips from his Hawaiian shirt, showing himself to be a thong-laden French banana having a nice day out at the beach. In his (deliberately) woeful-terrible French accent, this clownish banana reveals to the audience his sunburnt back and requests that an audience member helps him to apply sun lotion. From here, the show goes down numerous audience-assisted plotlines involving the extinction of banana varieties, bingo games and the frequent consumption of bananas. However random the show can seem at times, it is always entertaining and a highly original concept.

The most impressive aspect of the show is Galligan’s ability to interact with the audience. Audience participation is notably difficult, especially in a show where so much of the show’s momentum relies on people being willing to embarrass themselves onstage. However, Galligan makes sure people are laughing with the participant rather than at them. Even with a small audience of fifteen, there was a sense of camaraderie when watching the show, and people wanted to get involved to see more of Galligan’s impressive clown comedy.

There were moments when the comedy became uncomfortable to watch, especially when the banana characters expresses feelings of anger, as it breaks the line between the audience and the performance. These more serious outbursts balance with the overall silliness of the show as it was difficult to know when to laugh, creating a challenging critique on what is and isn’t comedic. Watching ‘Banana’ requires an openness to feeling not entirely comfortable, and a willingness to laugh in moments of confrontation. Zany, complicated and yellow, Banana creates a surprisingly thoughtful environment within a clownish setting.