Lano & Woodley back for Wagga Comedy Fest with comedic take on American epic Moby Dick

Lano & Woodley are back for the eighth Wagga Comedy Fest and the pair will bring a comedic rendering of the great American novel Moby Dick.

The show - taking place at the Civic Theatre - will see Colin 'Lano' Lane attempt to reenact the story for his comedy partner, Frank Woodley, a madcap idea born of the COVID enforced 2020 lockdowns.

"I read Moby Dick because I had time. It was a 700 page novel and it was a 700 day lockdown. So it kind of worked nicely together," Lano said of the show's inspiration.

"I just went well, 'Frank, it's a pretty epic novel. There's great kind of themes going on there: revenge and madness and spiritualism and, you know, the magnificent beasts, the whale and Captain Ahab and it just seems right for two dickheads to have a crack at trying to make a story out of it'."

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And Woodley was happy to run with his partner's latest crazy idea.

"I thought for about 10 seconds and I could just see [Lano] as the crazy, the crazy, demented Captain ... I thought, well, maybe I can be all the rest of the crew or I could maybe be the whale," he said.

"And I'm just glad that he hadn't read 50 Shades of Grey in lockdown or it would be a very different story."

The duo have worked together since the mid-80s producing over 40 shows, and they say the key to their longevity is time apart. But they always find themselves writing together again, as long as it's "genuinely funny".

"We do need to find this genuinely funny. We've got to muck around and play, be playful in the writing process and try to make each other laugh," Woodley said.

"We improvise throughout the show and what I'm finding, my main motivation is to try to get Colin to laugh when I'm on stage. I think that's maybe a big part of the secret as well as just just trying to keep that playfulness."

The pair look forward to touring places like Wagga, they often find country audiences more receptive and excited than their metro counterparts and they always try and cater their shows to the local crowd.

"If you study Moby Dick in high school, you're not going to really learn anything ... It's just a full on madcap hour and a half with Frank and I running around like dickheads hitting each other with blunt instruments," Lano said.

Lano & Woodley - Moby Dick will be playing at the Civic Theatre Saturday June 10.

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