Tom Walker’s Comedy Special "Very Very" Answers the Question, "What If Mime Was Good?"

You read that headline correctly. 

The art of mime is widely considered to be the lowest of the comedic forms, falling even below "watermelon splattering" and "intentionally ignoring the 'rule of three'".

But what Tom Walker’s new Amazon Prime Video comedy special presupposes is, maybe it isn’t?

In the Australian comic’s hilarious "Very Very", Walker—wearing only a T-shirt and shorts for reasons that become quickly apparent as he almost immediately breaks into a dangerous-seeming sweat—brings to life a series of absurd scenarios using the audience’s imagination. The most vivid involves him feeding himself his own mammoth, anaconda-sized penis. One of the few props he puts to use is a puffy jacket, which he occasionally romances, gets impregnated by, and endures some mouth play from.

That’s it. That’s the show.

And yet, that doesn’t do it justice. Walker’s an incredibly talented mime, even if he breaks a couple of the cardinal rules by, firstly, talking throughout the 50-minute comedy set, and, secondly, playing synchronised audio to complement his actions. So, you don’t just have to simply imagine Walker kicking at least four small dogs off the stage and into the far away distance; you get to hear it as well.

Walker and director Zoë Coombs Marr, knowing full well this set is just a showcase for silliness, passes up segues and transitions by simply having him give us a charming "yeah, I dunno" or "that's that" when a sequence runs out of jokes. Some are genius in their simplicity and specificity, such as his impression of a venetian blind. Even those that are slightly more conceptual are enhanced by the accompanying sound effects, bringing to mind the similarly brilliant pre-recorded bits from Bo Burnham’s Make Happy. Too high praise? The very (very) excellent Paul F. Tompkins doesn’t seem to think so.

If none of this sounds funny to you, well, you don’t sound too funny to me either. Fact is, the stranger and more surreal Walker’s scenes get, the more engrossing Very Very becomes, and by the time his grey tee is drenched in perspired effort-juices, any open-minded viewer will hopefully be in the same frenzied headspace, desperate for extra inanity. That’s what makes the early section in which Walker keeps breaking invisible champagne flutes for seemingly no reason so hysterical: the repetition of its nonsense dismantles our logic centre, making us more receptive to, and hungry for, additional lunacy. May we have another?

4.5/5

Very Very is now available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.

Header Image: Amazon Prime Video