WILL HITS FEVER PITCH

by Kate Herbert, Herald Sun page 89   Don't kiss Will Anderson. He has glandular fever. It's amazing he can stand up at all much less do stand-up comedy.   Anderson is funny and overwhelmingly charming, even with the teenage kissing disease.   His new show is peppered with frequent "I've been sick" excuses which are unnecessary.   The material is built around Australian history, a subject that seems to have left the national curriculum.   The Diggers' Room, which hides out the back of the North Melbourne Town Hall, is the ideal venue.   It is the meeting room of the Armed Forces League, the organisation which competes with the RSL for jingoism.   Anderson cleverly milks 10 minutes of gags out of the Aussie flag, the armed forces memorabilia and an authentic sign which reads "No Swearing In This Room".   He has a rapid response time which is barely affected by his illness.   Before he rolls headlong into the history, he preambles around TV game shows such as Burgo's Catch Phrase and the mindless Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. Eddie McGuire gets a pasting.   Anderson paces like a caged lion, pinning audience members with earnest eyes and winning looks (and a far too seductive hand on the reviewer's knee!) as well as doing clever and socially relevant material.   He has a go at the Aussie bloke and his homophobia then bumps into history again, managing to prove, by a circuitous route beginning with the convicts, that 96 per cent of the population is potentially bisexual.   He challenges our ignorance. "Does anyone know the name of the first Australian Prime Minister?" "Who wrote the constitution?" Through his comedy, he alerts us to our apathy and inertia.   We might mumble, "Who cares?" but Anderson nudges us to feel guilty and a bit embarrassed at our uninterest.   He has a sharp intellect, an informed mind and a quick wit.   I suspect he has more acerbic social and political satire up his sleeve, or in his little notebook.   I also suspect that, more often than he would like, he succumbs to the lower common denominator of comedy because the laugh is quicker and louder.   The average age and IQ of his audience would probably leap by tens if he upped the amount of sophisticated humour. He deserves a wider audience.