'Is There A Laughter Shortage?’

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31987, 14 May 1969, Page 1

'Is There A Laughter Shortage?’

The American comedian Shelley Berman, who arrived in Christchurch yesterday morning while on his third visit to the Dominion, believes that there is a laughter shortage in New Zealand.

“Tell me, what’s the- matter. Your audiences laugh in almost desperate fashion at my show. Don’t they laugh very often?”

Mr Berman said that New Zealand audiences were warm and appreciative, and among the best in the world. Looking very casual—

almost as if he was shortly to set out on a 10-mile jog—the entertainer stepped off the aircraft wearing a large red sweater, jeans and basket, ball boots.

“Well, what’s the house like in Christchurch?” he asked. "If we don’t get a full thea'.re tonight I’ll kill myself.” Mr Berman’s shows in Auckland and Wellington had played to full houses. Mr Berman described himself as a comedian, part-time

businessman and world traveller. “And there are very few reporters who know I grow beautiful roses at my home in Beverly Hills.”

Asked how he became interested in them, Mr Berman said it was something he inherited. “You see there were lots of roses in the property I bought. So I took an interest in them. Some which were not very good I dug out and replaced with better ones. Then as my knowledge of the flower improved I went after champion blooms and eventually to producing my own hybrids.” Mr Berman said that he was always pleased to talk about roses as he preferred reporters to ask him what “goes into my soul rather than what goes into my pocketbook.”

“With all due respects to Her Majesty, my Queen Elizabeth is suffering from mildew but a Matterhorn rose 1., have has finally produced the most exquisite white blooms. It’s a beautiful flower.” He said that he regretted that when he was on tours such as the present one so little time could be spent see-

ing the beauty of the country he was in. It was all a dash between hotels, airports and theatres.

To make up for this Mr Berman and his wife will spend two weeks holiday in New Zealand at the end of the tour. “We will see something of Rotorua and Queenstown. It will be relaxing not having to make people laugh although I probably will when I go fishing,” he said.

The entertainer said that the format of his stage routine had changed over the years. “Most people think of me sitting on a stool with a telephone as a prop yet in my show tonight 1 will only use the telephone conversation technique once in an hour and a half.”

Although he has strong views about politics, they are not expressed on stage. “If I do refer to politics or any other current topic, it is only in an oblique way. For example, I will be doing a long routine in the dark about a man with insomnia, yet really it is about man’s inhumanity to himself.” “Then there is the piece about the international conference which will tell you why we are in Vietnam without mentioning that country by name,” he said.

‘Need Entertainment’ Mr Berman believes that people need entertainment and that when a person pays $3.50 to see a show he is entitled to “the whole works.” He was referring to his performance in Wellington which went on without a rehearsal. “This meant that there were flaws in the total presentation. The audience might not have been aware of them but I was, and had there been a rehearsal everything would have gone the way it should have,” he said. The flaws had nothing to do with the material but with lighting effects. “Did you know that there are only two spotlights available in Wellington right now? ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ is playing there and perhaps they have them all. But the two spots are owned by two people and neither thought fit to come to Asked if he had a favourite comedian, Mr Berman replied that all comedians were funny to him when they were being funny but he preferred the actor-type such as Jackie Gleeson or Jack Benny. Mr Berman also prefers performing in a theatre rather than a night club. “The theatre I- far more intimate. For one thing they are all there to see the artist and they all face him whereas in a nightclub there are too many distractions. There is

the meal, the guy who is trying to impress the broad with him, or a businessman entertaining an out-of-town client in the hope perhaps of clinching a deal,” he said.