Shaken – Melbourne Fringe

Who is the best James Bond? It’s a question that has plagued us since the time someone-other-than-Sean Connery played the role.

Shaken is pitched as Baritones Belting Bond and the songs are the highlight of the show. Creator Charlie D Barkle has an impressive voice and he’s chosen to showcase the best Bond themes from across fifty years. You’d expect ‘Goldfinger’ and ‘Skyfall’ but I’m glad they did ‘Thunderball’ and ‘Licence to Kill’, too.

In between the songs, there’s a kind of game show to assess the best Bond – taking into account the actor’s age upon leaving the role, multiplied by a factor of “cheating death” and “causing death” plus the number of women he slept with, divided by the number of films he was in.

James Bond should be made fun of, even some of these great songs have dodgy lyrics. But with the songs beautifully sung and the sketches in between bordering on terrible, the show left me neither shaken nor stirred.