Copped

Last night I ventured into the Comedy Festival again for Police Cops, a high energy, exquisitely choreographed mockery of the clichés and formulas of American cop dramas. There’s the older brother/father gunned down before the young hero’s eyes, the slow motion flying from an explosion, the jaded ex-cop whose faith in humanity is restored by the hero’s idealism, the authority figure who betrays them and, of course, the casual racism.


We entered that macho, vaguely homoerotic reality when manly men do manly things and crack their own tough outer shells and learn to share their entirely manly feelings (a love for socket sets, or something). They raise a barn, they ride horses, and they fight bad guys… and rip their shirts off at every opportunity. The funniest part of the show, apart from the occasional slip in the choreography that sent props flying or left someone with their shirt on backwards, was the fact that two of the performers had perfect six pack abs, but the third, while no fatty, didn’t. When he went into one of his shirtless hero poses, he would hold it just a little longer than the others, flexing just a little bit more to make his muscles pop, catching the audience's eyes as he grimaced with the effort, thus breaking for fourth wall for a second and underlining the ridiculousness of it all.


At the end of the performance they were all drenched in sweat despite the chilly Melbourne evening. I only hope they washed their Old Glory underpants and cat costumes before the next show.