The Groggy Squirrel

Dwayne Robbin is a Motivational Magician. In his Motivational Hour, Dwayne attempted to conjure positive attitudes in those in need of his help.

A number of parodies of self help gurus have been seen in previous years so it was clear that the industry was still ripe for the picking. The twist this time was the use of magic tricks in his demonstrations of “the power of positive thinking”. At times the tricks weren’t highly polished with the secret of trick clearly visible that may have been a deliberate ploy to further ridicule self help as the scam some people view it as. He even used the resultant chaos of the tricks to berate punters for not embracing the concepts to his liking.

Well dressed and lathered in Fake Tan, he spouted all the requisite self help jargon in this lecture. He had sales pitch for his books and recommendations for numerous other products that were obviously done on a commission! Advertisements for these services were presented in a rather straight faced manner with a subtle knowing wink to the audience at the ridiculousness of the material.

The character of Dwayne was portrayed as a rather delusional and misinformed American that was the basis for many of the jokes. His ignorance and many mis-spelled words worked well with is loud and brash delivery to paint him as a vivid cartoon of a man. An added source of mirth was his ability to use the ignorance as a means of ridiculing aspects of Australia including The Fringe. There was also a slight element of the humour of humiliation as he bluntly spoke to the punters about their shortcomings but this was done without cruelty.

With the combination of magic and motivation, audience participation was a major part of the show. Through some banter with a few punters he determined their problems and invited them up on stage to learn his techniques. Money issues were dealt with via some currency conjuring while other abstract issues were demonstrated via card tricks and other stunts.

He made liberal use of PowerPoint in his lecture which seemed like it was often used more as a prompt for his script rather than an enhancement of his presentation. Some slides did contain visual gags but most slides displayed great slabs of text which were read out by Dwayne. I would give him the benefit of the doubt that was yet another attempt at painting this guru as an incompetent fraud. Some low tech visual aids employed due to AV problems were a nice touch and added some extra laughs.

This show was a wonderful parody of the self help industry that was delivered with plenty of colour and movement to keep us thoroughly entertained.

Visit the Fringe Website for booking details.