Book Review: The Uncollected Plays of Shaun Micallef

Shaun's expression is one of
'are you really sure you want to read this?'

Shaun Micallef is one of Australia's premier comedian, actor, writer, and media personalities responsible for numerous comedy TV shows, and generally leaning towards surrealist humor that often gives him a more unique perspective on finding what's funny in any given situation.

He's actually one of my favorite humorists working in entertainment, hence I was looking forward to reading his book, The Uncollected Plays of Shaun Micallef.

You would think a man who writes a lot of contemporary, biting satire would be a sure thing, laugh a minute writer of short plays but unfortunately, this book was disappointing. I found it extremely challenging to read, and was constantly looking to see how many pages were left to endure of the various plays as I read them.

Part of the problem is the majority of the plays are based on historical themes that were not only before my time, but also before Shaun's time. We're talking bible stories, World Wars, and even a reimagining of The John Merrick story. The whole book is like reading the work of someone who hasn't updated their pop culture references in decades (or even centuries).

I feel a lot of the references just went over my head too because only highly educated people care about classic tales by historical authors like God (I'm pretty sure God probably had one or two ghost writers pen his/her/their book).

It's almost like he's channelling the themes that his influences, The Goons, Monty Python, Spike Milligan, Woody Allen, Barry Humphries etc. have all been known to write about, and not even getting close to their brilliance in making these subjects funny.

Perhaps the various plays really need to be performed in order to see the humor, but I found very little to even raise a smile. I could see the jokes coming, and the fourth wall interactions with the audience, used by different characters in several of the plays, started to wear thin.

It was all a bit strange because a lot of the jokes are exactly my style of humor and the reason I like Shaun's work. The real problem, I think, is I just didn't connect with any of the characters given how far removed most are from contemporary society.

In between the plays there are short chapters of 'advice' for playwrights which were actual highlights for me, as were the introductions to each play. I'm assuming the various anecdotes are real (but probably embellished) stories of how the plays came to be. Still not a lot of laughs here though either.

In the end, I think I would rather have been reading a Shaun Micallef autobiography than this collection of plays.

Definitely a book to read from a library. You'll only want to own it if you're a Shaun Micallef completionist. It feels like this book only exists because there's little chance of any of these plays being performed more than a handful of times if they're lucky.

If you must have it, purchase the book from Amazon using the link below.
The Uncollected Plays of Shaun Micallef

* This article contains Amazon Associate commission links that help keep this site free.

Comments

I'm Confused About Why People Prefer to Say Discombobulated?

D iscombobulated. Is a word that I think someone rediscovered about three or four years ago (maybe more because the pandemic years have thrown out my sense of time) and now I hear it a lot. It's not a new word by any means, but when I started hearing multiple celebrities using it in everyday sentences, I actively had to look up what it meant. Define it with as many synonyms as you like but essentially it's just another word meaning 'confused'. Seinfeld Quotes: Quotes.net The words are pretty much interchangeable. He was discombobulated by too many choices. He was confused by too many choices. My confusion is the length of the word. It's unnecessarily long with too many syllables. There are many other words that mean confused, and therefore also mean discombobulated. Most of them are shorter and easier to say. So why not just say 'confused'? Perhaps discombobulated sounds more intelligent, maybe? Hawaii Five-0 Quotes: Quotes.net I've noticed it gets us...

Second Sunday Skateboard Session Ep 2 - Some Improvements

TET heelflip - looking better but still not a land. A s of writing this I've stuck to my plan of filming myself skate every second Sunday. By the time this post goes up I will have three episodes done. As part of that goal I am also skating more between episodes, about every second to third day for an hour, practicing Braille's Skateboarding Made Simple, Volume 1. That said, I'm not posting these videos here immediately after they're posted to my @TETLife YouTube Channel because I only post an article once a week, and that would make every second article a Sunday Session post. These posts are really so I can add some additional thoughts after the fact, and, of course, because this blog is about all things that interest me, of which skateboarding is one of them. In episode two I had intended to speak to camera more than I do but my driveway is right next door to my neighbor's shed/workshop, and I get a little self-conscious if I'm not too sure whether he's th...

The Princess' Butterflies - Using an AI Image to Video Generator to Animate Art That Started as a 23 Year Old Rough Pen Sketch

B ack in October of 2023 I used Prome AI's Sketch Rendering feature to color a 23 year old rough pen sketch I did of a princess watching butterflies, sitting next to a waterfall in the forest. You can read more about that in my previous article, The Princess' Butterflies - Using an AI Art Generator to Color and Enhance a 23 Year Old Rough Pen Sketch The three images I used to create my final image (bottom right). Notice how closely the AI has followed my line art sketch (top left) but in the first image (top right) has misinterpreted the waterfall as some kind of large tree stump. Prome's render of the artwork was pretty good but I did end up creating a composite image myself from two of the best renders, to get my final image. Since then AI Image to Video has come a long way, particularly when it comes to creating animation from artwork and maintaining the art style for the whole generation. AI still does much better with turning photographic images to video but I found ...

Australian Federal Election 2025 - The Australian Democrats (Please Like Us Again) and The Greens

Image: Reve AI T here's not much to be said about the current Australian Democrats other than in 2025 Australian election, in May, they'll be out there hoping they win a seat... any seat... 'please like us again!' The Australian Democrats For just over two decades, from the late seventies onward, the Australian Democrats were the third most important party in the Federal government (if you don't count the National party since they've been on that coalition ticket with the Liberals for as long as I can remember). In fact, once I moved away from the Labor party, they were my top pick until the party slowly imploded in the early 2000's from a series of unfortunate events like leaders defecting to other parties, and a highly publicised incident of drunkenness, bullying, and abuse from a male party leader to a female colleague. It's been two decades since then (and that guy's with the Greens now)... please like us again! That aside, the party is still t...

The Australian Federal Election 2025 Could Be a Win For Independents

Australian Democrats founder, Senator Don Chipp, embodied the role of minor parties holding the balance of power with his quote of "keep the bastards honest." Photo Manipulated Caricature by TET. A s of writing this, the actual Australian Federal Election date has yet to be announced, as our Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, attempts to keep the focus on the fallout of severe weather events in Queensland, however it's looking likely that some time in May is the safest bet. Despite this, all parties have been hard at campaigning, with smaller parties, and in particular, conservative independent candidates, seemingly rallying together to make sure people know how much influence they can have just by preventing the two major parties (Labor and the Liberal/National coalition) from having a majority in either (or both) houses of parliament. They're also doing their part to make sure voters finally understand that preferential voting works in everybody's favor over one ...

Boom Crash Opera Born Classic But Not Again

Boom Crash Opera are an Australian Band that reached the peak of their popularity in the mid to late nineteen eighties. They are a band that I knew about at that time but was never really excited by until they released their ill fated double album Born and Born Again in 1995 (Album cover pictured). At the time of its release I was very much into emerging Australian musical acts and was also looking out for new sounds that were different and had kind of a futuristic/electronic sound. Artists that I was buying at the time included; Swoop , Nine Inch Nails and Pop Will Eat Its Self . As well as a really interesting release by David Bowie, the concept album, Outside . Born was a fairly radical departure for Boom Crash Opera (BCO). The first single, Gimme , was often compared to the sounds of Gary Glitter, particularly his single, Rock n Roll part 2 , because of the pounding drum loops. Watch the video below. My favorite single from the album is dissemble which probably went now...

Making an Effort to Be a President Trump Free Zone - Final Rant (I Hope)

I hope the American people, who voted for President Trump, get the full experience of what they thought they voted for along with what they're actually getting. Now may be a good time for them to learn to speak Russian because if World War Three does break out, it's not beyond possibility that it'll be the USA and Russia against the rest of the world, as Trump appears to be emboldening Russia to dig in on their attack on the Ukraine. China, may opt to stay neutral, or even join forces with the rest of the world because they've been quietly winning an economic war with so many countries, they may not care so much about the USA. Especially since President Trump wants to bring manufacturing back to America and impose tariffs on every country exporting anything to the USA. After that fiasco meeting President Zelenskyy had in the Oval Office with President Trump I've pretty much had enough. I'm not writing about what new dumb ass thing Trump's doing this week. ...

TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

Search This Blog