Dark Side of the Poon - 2010
“One of the most talked about shows at the Edinburgh Fringe”
GETCOMEDY.COM, 18 August 2010
Review: FEST MAGAZINE, 21 August 2010, by James McIrvine
Pete Jonas’ show is vaginal. He tells us at the start just in case you hadn’t gathered it from the title. Comedians have long relied on dick jokes and Jonas feels that it’s time that "the poon" got in on the action.
This could easily be extremely crass though, to Jonas’s credit, it isn’t. Well, not entirely. There are points where the whole act could seem a little childish yet Jonas pulls it back from the brink. He’s a very natural comedian and likable to boot. The more outrageous comments he makes about his ex-girlfriends are tempered by what seems to be genuine humility.
Jonas may be a brash Australian who likes to talk about twats but he manages to do it in such a way that he doesn’t seem like one. It’s telling that most of the big laughs from the crowd come from women. Material concerning clitoral stimulation and Rampant Rabbits is apparently more awkward for the men in the crowd.
Although he justifies his use of a PowerPoint presentation explaining that it is a great way of imparting boring information, these scenes do feel like they go on too long. While a slide show might be a useful crutch for someone who needs to fill time in their standup show, you get the sense that Jonas doesn’t really need to resort to this.
Nevertheless, he pulls off unsophisticated subject matter in a sophisticated way and manages to be very funny while he's about it.
Review: THE AUSTRALIAN TIMES, 21 June 2010, by Vivienne Hill
Guys, have you ever been through a bad break up? Didn’t know what the hell went wrong and had no one to really talk about it with? Pete Jonas knows your story and he wants to set the record straight.
Australian comedian Pete Jonas has been living in London for over five years now, traipsing around the comedy circuit trying his true blue material on anyone who will listen.
He performed a sold out show called Brokeback Britain at the 2006 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
For this year’s Fringe, he’s gone solo and produced something sure to wow true comedic fans in Edinburgh next month.
Dark Side of the Poon is a 50 minute spectacle that looks at the reasons why couples break up and why it’s the woman’s fault. In addition to some hilarious stand up comedy, Pete uses Powerpoint presentations for such things as rating his break-ups and also to compare sex toys to different children’s toys. The best part of the show has to be a 6”4’ talking vagina which interacts with Pete on stage.
Pete’s material is pant wettingly funny but probably not a show to take your grandma to, unless she is a bit risqué.
Dark Side of the Poon looks at some rather provocative topics including, sex, masturbation, sex toys, female and male private parts and orgasms; topics any good comedian should cover at least once in their career.
Just when you think he’s not about to ‘go there,’ he ‘goes there’ and further. Of particular note was the joke “if you can’t lift em, don’t fuck em,” and a hilarious joke about Josef Fritzl that is a little too vulgar to write in a public newspaper. Jokes like ‘don’t talk during sex unless you are saying ‘did you lock the door?’’ or ‘when does your husband come home?’ went down a treat with the intimate audience.
The venue was rather small which meant that almost everyone audience fell prey to Jonas’s hilariously vicious barbs at some point.
This was only the third time Pete had performed the show in full, so you could forgive him for it being a little rough at the seams which you can expect to be tightened up come Fringe time.
Dark Side of the Poon is edgy and crass enough to delight even the most battle hardened Fringe faithful and the laugh out loud moments come thick and fast enough to ensure it gets a good look-in up north of the border.