Rave review: Julia Masli – Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha
When were you last actually scared in a theatre?
I heard a faint whisper of ‘audience participation’ as we entered the packed main stage of London’s Soho Theatre for Julia Masli’s show: ‘Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha’.
I glanced down at my ticket and was very reassured to see that we were in Row D.
Huzzah! Well into the safety zone, I thought!
A bit of background
I’m not one of those punters who rushes for the front row of a comedy show, hoping to engage with the comedian. They are far too clever to tangle with, I much prefer the safety of the third row or back from that.
I had not researched this show at all before arrival, all I knew was that she had been nominated for ‘Best Show’ at the Edinburgh Comedy Awards 2023, which in my book meant we were in for a treat!
I’m an Edinburgh Festival Fringe veteran and that nomination was a big deal, so when I was offered a ticket for this I readily accepted. No questions asked.
In the same way that it is impossible to make a list things that haven’t occurred to you, there is no way I could possibly have guessed how this show was going to begin based on its title, or indeed end.
Julia Masli – Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha
It was one of the most brilliantly unnerving starts to a show I’ve ever seen, incredible in its simplicity and theatrics.
Julia emerges onto the stage very slowly and only her head is lit. She moves gradually and deliberately uttering ‘Ha’ very softly, like this.
Julia’s costume gave her an outer worldly look and the lighting served to only highlight her head which appeared, at first, to be floating.
After an agonising few minutes she reaches the front row, having stopped off along the way to fashion an extended microphone from a mannequin’s leg, which her left arm is now wearing.
“Ha” she says, and then proffers the microphone to her first punter.
“Ha” he responds.
This looked like the correct response, Julia is happy and moves on to the next person.
“Ha” she asks, but never with a question mark, preferring her eyes to ask the question.
“Ha” they respond, to a pleased looking Julia.
Wow! Hats off to the audience, we’re on fire!
“Ha” she asks to the next…
… at which point the penny dropped with me and the show’s title, well done Julia, very clever. 👏
This next punter, however, does not respond!
The audience are on tenterhooks!? Julia looks displeased.
“Ha” she repeats.
Nothing from our hapless punter, who remains silent!?!
“Don’t be a renegade! Just ‘Ha’ back! We want to please the very wide-eyed Julia! Don’t anger her!” we implore him, at the top of our minds… silently.
She gestures for him to get up, he does, and she takes his chair and puts it in the stage area, he can sit on the floor.
Instead said punter opts for sharing his girlfriend/wife/whatever’s chair (one buttock apiece), and buckles up for a very uncomfortable hour to follow.
Shit! Can she do that? Confiscate someone’s seat who’s paid for a ticket???
Julia then drags the chair to the back of the stage and proceeds to smash its wooden limbs apart with a hammer… which isn’t a quick job when wearing a mannequin’s leg on one of your arms.
A full two minutes later, the chair is in tatters… to match the increasingly nervous audience.
We must do what Julia wants. She is quick to anger, we have learned that much.
She moves forward amongst the audience, we give her a few more obedient ‘Ha’s’ and then she switches it up.
“Problem?” Mannequin-leg-microphone at full stretch.
“Er, um, do I have a problem?” The latest ‘chosen one’ mutters back.
“Problem?” Julia repeats, wide-eyed and nodding slowly.
“Er, um, I haven’t had a holiday this year, it would be nice to travel more.”
“Go! Go! Out into the world and explore it! Go! You must go!!!”
And she literally shoos him out of the theatre, and tells him not to come back!
Shit! Can she do that? Throw someone out who’s paid for a ticket???
After a polite one minute on the other side of the door, he gingerly tries to come back in, but she’s not having it, and shoos him out again.
“You must travel and see the world, I am only holding you back! Go and explore! Have an adventure!” She exclaims, whilst absolutely, definitely, 100% not letting him back in.
Obviously by now, we’re all quite terrified. Can you take people’s seats and throw people out? What if she comes for me next!?
She won’t. As previously advertised, I’m sitting smugly in the fourth row, no one ever goes further than the third row, we all know that.
“Problem?” She enquires to a foolish 2nd rower.
“I don’t have a job.” He responds, garnering a fair degree of sympathy from the crowd.
“I will give you a job!” Julia exclaims gleefully.
We now notice there is an office desk, computer and chair on the stage, to which he is ushered to and asked to make a spreadsheet of everyone’s problems. He seems bizarrely happy about this and eagerly complies.
“This I can do! Ok, so I may be on stage, but at least I’m still in the room with an entire chair to myself. Result!” He must surely have been thinking.
“Problem?” She continues… now moving down the central aisle of the audience.
Wait? What! Really? You’re meant to stay at the front Julia! You can’t just meander around in our area, the audience’s area!
You must stay at the front and take what you can with your outstretched-mannequin-leg-microphone!
But sadly she didn’t hear my thoughts and started to probe the third row!
“Problem?”
“Er, um, I don’t have an outlet for my creativity in my current job.”
“I will give you a creative task!” She beams.
Then leads him to the stage, arms him with a roll of gaffer tape and asks him to fix the chair that she’s just smashed up.
Bizarrely, said punter looks quite happy with being given this task and sets about it with full focus.
She’s back in the audience and has now moved to the far side. Thank Christ! I will be safe for a few more ‘Problems?’.
The ‘Problems?’ now start getting bigger and with each one, she asks the audience for help.
The audience offers help, which can at the low-end be advice or a contact.
And at the extreme end an audience member offered a New Zealander the use of their Antipodean holiday home, until they get back on their feet after losing their own house to a recent fire!
I shit you not.
Crowd-sourcing at its best.
Oh no! She’s moving over to our side of the theatre, already having proven that she is not afraid to go beyond the 6th row!
Bollox! I am most definitely no longer in the safe zone!!!
And I can’t think of a ‘Problem’. Fuck! What will I say!?
I’ve gone full Mark Corrigan1 in my head now, whilst hopefully keeping a confident ‘go on, ask me anything’ exterior, which will hopefully put Julia off asking my anything.
“Problem?” She addresses the person two rows in front and three seats along from where I am.
Fuck-a-doodle-doo!!! She’s getting close now!
“What’s the meaning of life?” He queries.
“Anyone?” Julia, who is from Estonia, asks the overwhelmingly British audience.
“42” we all respond in unison.
To which she looked genuinely startled.
It was such a funny moment to out-surreal a surrealist!
Unlike us, she hadn’t read ‘The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy’ by Douglas Adams or seen the TV series which culminated in ’42’ being the answer to ‘Life, the Universe and Everything’.
Luckily the punter who had posed the question played along and looked very satisfied with that answer and so she moved on.
“Problem?” She posed to the chap only two shitting seats away from me!?!!?
Inner monologue…
Oh yes, I have a problem!
What the buggering-fuck am I going to say if that menacing mannequin limb edges nearer!?
Then it struck me! I will say I’m really thirsty!
I hadn’t realised you could take your drink into the theatre and therefore I didn’t have one, but had noticed those in the balcony above were rocking their plastic glasses like a badge of honour.
That is a genius question, I thought, and a positive win-win situation!
I’m sure Julia will be able to crowd-source me a G&T from the upper circle and everyone, especially me, will be very happy!
I could not have been more pleased with myself, had I discovered the secret of alchemy right at that moment!
Pick me Julia! Pick me!!! I thought loudly, without moving a muscle, so as not to draw attention to myself.
With all the busyness of my thoughts, I didn’t quite catch the actual question posed by my next-door-but-one-neighbour, but I do remember the solution involved a rather stale looking pizza which descended from the Gods over the stage.
Perhaps they said they were hungry?
Anyway, dear Julia drifted off to another section and never did ask me in the end.
So my question is still shiny new, with tags, complete in its plastic wrap… and ready for you to use at one of her other gigs this year!
She’s currently in Melbourne with this show, then New York and coming back around to Brighton and London in the UK later this year.
Do go and see her if you get the chance, she’s truly one of a kind, and you may well be one of the lucky ones that gets to crowd-surf or shower naked on stage at the end!
I would highly recommend!
You’re welcome!
K8x
Join in the comments below:
Have you ever dreamed of having a leg as an arm?
Do you harbour a secret desire to shower naked in front of a packed audience?
Have you ever been to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe?
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Mark Corrigan is a character from the fabulous UK sitcom Peep Show, who over-stresses about everything – real or imaginary, whilst giving us a running commentary of his inner-monologue.
Wow. Her show sounds... interesting. Like you, I'm there to observe and laugh, not to participate. LOL Where do the laughs come in? Because from the way you were describing things, it didn't sound like there was any laughing going on. Unless the answers were funny?
Have you ever dreamed of having a leg as an arm? Um. No. Can't say that I have. LOL
Do you harbour a secret desire to shower naked in front of a packed audience? OMG, NEVER!!
Have you ever been to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe? No. I've never been to that neck of the woods, but I'd love to visit. I volunteer proofread for a nonprofit creative writing center for youth that's based in Edinburgh.
Loved this! Ha ha ha. I would have been at the back.