Review by Tatum Stafford
Mark Vigeant’s ‘Mark Pleases You’ is 50 minutes of chaos, confusion, and coarse language – all of these are compliments, by the way!
The premise of this show enticed me. It’s about Mark, a self-confessed people pleaser who accidentally kills himself on stage and has the chance to go back in time to convert his 12-year-old self into being, well, not a people pleaser.
Mark brings a very chaotic energy on stage with him, and in the first few minutes of the show, he juggles balls, laughs maniacally at us, and then drops three laptops before attempting to juggle those to – all of this, designed to please us. When he slips, falls, and ‘kills’ himself, he is transported straight to hell and has a humorous conversation with a sleazy Satan and then enters into the rest of the show, the majority of which centres around a conversation between current Mark and 12-year-old Mark.
Mark is an amazing physical comedian, and during this show you’ll see him throw his body around the small playing space, laughing so hard he goes a bit crazy, and even performing a choreographed dance routine to Seal’s “Kiss From a Rose”. He is so committed that at times, the audience found themselves still laughing at the previous joke as he had moved onto the next.
He was also a fantastic improviser, which I particularly enjoyed. This extended to audience members who popped in late, and included a few very funny moments where he got a bit ‘meta’ and tried to catch the audience up to speed when the plot went a bit haywire (which did happen quite a bit).
There’s a nice moral at the end of the show about being yourself and taking pride in who you are without trying to please others, but this show isn’t trying to be too deep, and I respect that choice. It can be taken on face value – it’s funny, at times a bit stupid, and takes us on a journey through Mark’s people-pleasing over the past 30+ years.
I had a great time at this show, and would recommend grabbing a ticket if you want an escape from reality and a very funny hour of physical comedy and sledging. Sit in the front row if you want to see a MacBook shatter in front of your eyes (yes, really).
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