Life is a competition, that’s why they call it the “human race”. Everyday, even if you don’t think it, you’re competing. Even on the way to the show, I was thinking “damn it, I should be writing more, everyone else there will be further ahead of me in their art form”. You might be competing against a co-worker, making them the lazy one. You might be fighting against a fellow writer, arguing they’ve gotten their facts wrong or that a survey suspiciously done only one week ago proves their hypothesis incorrect. Whoever it is, you’re in competition with someone, everyone’s always looking to be the best, the one to look up to, the one to worship, the one that God will shine his heavenly light on, the one who not only gets into Heaven, but goes in with a VIP lanyard, the one who’s pouring wine with Jesus Christ himself. So answer the question: Are you the best?
‘Who’s The Best?’ is a comedy directed by Professor Malcolm Whittaker that pits its cast members against each other in a bid for total superiority through genres of challenges, which each have their own subgenre, which also have sub-subgenres and sub-sub-subgenres. 9 cast members strut their stuff, debate and perform in order to prove to the audience they’re a role-model. Throughout the performance, however, it’s clear that almost none of these people have redeeming qualities and that the losers of the competition are the audience for suffering through the character’s ego-driven rants.
As far as I can understand, the performance seems to be a hilarious satire of reality show competitions. As I watched, I saw such Big Brother archetypes as the attention-lover (played by Matilda Ellicot), the lovable moron (Jai Sahota), the sore loser (Sienna Pallone) and the psych-beast (Micheal Conrecode). Each player argues over the rules and the rankings as we watch our very own University of Wollongong Survivor season play out, minus the tribes and alliances.
Without a doubt, Jai Sahota and Jayden Holmik stole the show when I attended, their complete tone-deaf confidence made me crack up more times than anyone else on stage. Jadyn’s best moment was definitely his over-explanation of the distribution of points. “Like inverse golf, where you want the most points, and not like inverse-inverse golf where you want the least points”. Jai’s best moment would be every single time he flaunts his knee, displaying his dominance in the legs-lowerbody-physical genre. Sienna was amazing as the usual killjoy who needs to re-write the rules because she desperately believes she deserves points. Her sternness and frustration as she fails to get an audience survey was a major highlight. Matilda was amazing as the attention-lover, taking each and every opportunity to show that she’s the idol and to rub in everyone’s faces her every accomplishment like every Big Brother contestant ever. Micheal fit the role of the reality show psych-beast perfectly, completely personifying every Hell’s Kitchen contestant in the first week. The other cast members (Sophie Brunner, Kerth Caro, Madison Lopez and Charlotte Unsworth) were fantastic characters to play off of, they may not have stood out as much, but they really helped blend everybody’s flawed personalities. Everyone contributed to successfully show that none of us can ever be the best, because everyone’s terrible in their own way.
Mason’s Top 3 Reasons To Snatch Up The Last Tickets To ‘Who’s The Best’
Images: Cris Chavez