Randy: Live!, Canberra Comedy Festival, Big Band Room, ANU School of Music.

The last time I saw Randy Feltface onstage he was doing his double-act with Sammy J, about 8 years ago, in their show "Bin Night". As a team they had an intriguing dynamic - Sammy, the human, was more of a naive dreamer while Randy, the puppet, was a tad more grizzled and practical and a little intense. Now he's gone solo, and ... okay, the world of puppet standup is not exactly a massive part of the industry, but somehow with Randy it just works. The design of Randy as a puppet doesn't look that complicated (he's basically a pretty basic looking bald head with rod arms), but it allows for a cartoonish quality to be applied to material that, at this point, is pretty realistic - all of the stories told in the course of the show feel like things that have genuinely happened to Heath McIvor (the massively talented puppeteer who remains invisible under the desk making the face, arms and voice work). There's some reasonable effects from some of the practical challenges of working a puppet (removing a hood or turning the page of a book turn out to be a lot more effort than normal), and the ever-active face and body-movements certainly keep things lively. While thematically this show's theoretically focused on faith and belief, in many ways this is just a collection of humorous stories with a basic underlying message of mutual respect. But it's a show that's held together by a combination of compassion and oddity, a smart comedic voice and an engaging, if odd, way of simultaneously revealing a lot in the storytelling while being able to hide under the desk at the same time. It's great fun.