Funny Greek bears gifts

He’s made films with Russell Crowe, Al Pacino and Jim Belushi, is making a TV sitcom with Vince Vaughn and plays to 2500-plus theatres across North America.

But Los Angeles-based comedian Angelo Tsarouchas is happy to perform in the small 150-capacity basement cabaret room at His Majesty’s Theatre on his first visit to Perth.

“You can’t rest on your laurels, ” the Canadian-Greek actor and stand-up comic says. “At my heart I’m a comedian and if I get the chance to come to Australia, or the UK, or South Africa, I’ll go. It could be 50 people or 10,000 people, it doesn’t matter to me as long as people want to laugh.”

Tsarouchas, 50, who performed at the Regal Theatre gala to get the Perth Comedy Festival into full swing last month, may be little-known here but he has sold out five big rooms in Melbourne where his act sits in the stream of Greek diaspora “wog” humour plumbed by the likes of Nick Giannopoulos and the Superwog duo from YouTube (who also are performing in Perth on May 22).

But his gags range more broadly from the Greek debt crisis to his weird encounters with people around the world and body-image issues.

“My show really is a journey through my life, ” he says. “I am a big man who lives in a thin world. I reverse the mirror on the audience to say this is how you think but you are never going to say it because of political correctness.”

His film credits include The Score, The Recruit, Cinderella Man, the Harold & Kumar series and most recently Fred & Vinnie, the true-life tale of the world’s fattest vegetarian and agoraphobe.

Whether he is performing in his birthplace of Ottawa or touring the Middle East, he enjoys finding the common denominator with people in the style of an old-fashioned yarn spinner, he says.

A good comedian can translate their experience to wide audiences. “People are going to get a nice buffet of comedy, pardon the pun.”