REVIEW: Gabriel Iglesias – One Show Fits All
It’s official. The Americans are over the top.
It was my privilege to see Gabriel Iglesias, aka Fluffy, at Sydney’s ICC Theatre Darling Harbour last Saturday night and the show was… bigger than big. From the moment we joined the queue it was obvious that this was going to be something special. Why else would you have lines of security guards, bag handlers and body scanners on the ready? Fluffy is extremely popular. Make no mistake about that. But is he popular with the right people? Just why was there such a need for so much security? Is it because he is Mexican? Is he the one that got away? Or is it because he is American and needs to create his own wall to keep away overzealous fans who think he sold out to the other side? Who knows? But I tell you what! The sheer number of adoring fans in attendance was really something to behold and we were eagerly anticipating a fine-tuned and funny performance.
Just as in rock concerts there was a backup performer on first. The first act was also a Mexican by the name of Anthony Nobles who entered the stage with an introduction by Fluffy via a youtube link. In fact, various ‘Fluffy Facts’ had preceded him and the audience gave him a wonderful reception worthy of the main act. Nobles joked about cats and Mexicans. Not dissimilar in that cats know how to scale and climb high walls. He made the same joke many times repeated for the benefit of latecomers. A very clever idea and one which really got the audience on side. He had started with, ‘I have a cat’, and he finished with the same line. There was a Fluffy t-shirt competition just before intermission with a big lady voted the winner by the 8,000 strong audience and then, finally, Fluffy himself.
Turns out Iglesias is a very keen observer of people in general and he certainly had a good understanding of the average laconic Aussie bloke. He mentioned Paul Hogan and gave him credit for being a ‘famous Aussie celebrity’, and then informed the audience that he’d done a show where he lampooned Steve Irwin. Apparently, he still gets hate mail from Irwin’s fans. This was a setup for a spiel about finding a snake in a Christmas tree when invited over to the home of an Aussie family for a Christmas lunch. It wasn’t so much the joke but the delivery that had the audience awestruck. Fluffy had captured not only the accent, but the deadpan drawl of the man, and woman, on the land.
In fact, Fluffy was so intimate with his huge audience that they believed every detail of every story he told about being out and about meeting with the locals. The story of how he came to acquire a small Australian knife and smuggle it through customs without anyone flinching was truly remarkable. The comparisons between American and Australian customs officials were spot on and that may be because we do not invite the same kind of publicity. There were many references to the differences between the U.S. and Australia, even New Zealand got a look in with Kiwis being touted as Australia’s Mexicans.
I cannot repeat any of Iglesias jokes here but this will give you some idea of just how topical he is. One Show Fits All is very topical and really does fit all. The thing is that principally the man is an excellent storyteller with an uncanny knack of making each person feel comfortable. As if the stories he tells are for them only. Maybe it’s the obligatory Hawaiian shirt that makes his show such a happy holiday or maybe it’s just the just the sheer sound of raucous laughter. Whatever it is that makes this show work on every level it’s Fluffy magic.
Reviewed by Renee Dallow
