Dungeon Crawl

Richard McKenzie and Ben McKenzie in Dungeon Crawl. Photo by James Penlidis.

Enter the dungeon. Kill the monsters. Take their stuff. That’s the dungeon crawl.

Sounds easy – unless the fighter is more of a lover, the senile wizard can’t remember where he put his pants let alone his spellbook and the thief has decided its far easier to steal from a bunch of stupid adventurers than a dragon…

Ben McKenzie (Museum Comedy, Planet Nerd) and Richard McKenzie (Mint Condition, The Anarchist Guild Social Committee), the pair of idiots behind +1 Sword (‘hilariously geeky…I laughed so much my jaw hurt’ – Buzzcuts/3RRR ), invite you to join them each month as they take  guest comedians on a Dungeon Crawl of their own.

The hottest impro and comedy nerds will fight, sneak and possibly dance their way through a fantasy adventure in which nothing is certain but danger, magic and cheap props. Dungeon Master Ben wields supreme power in presenting the world of his imagination to our heroes, while Richard – with the help of the finest toys two dollars can buy – becomes the cast of villagers, guards, goblins and dragons whom they encounter.  Dungeon Crawl is half role-playing game, half fantasy sit-com – but all about killing monsters and stealing their stuff.

Dungeon Crawl everywhere!

We can hardly keep up with the new Dungeon Crawl shows we’re planning! In July, we’re staging an additional show – Dungeon Mook: Crawl to Mount Geek – as a fundraiser for Vignette Press, publishers of Geek Mook. Then, the day after our regular monthly show in August, we’re off to Sydney for Dungeon Crawl: Keep on the Bondilands, a one-off show at the Bondi Pavilion! Check out the front page for all the details, but in the meantime, our regular monthly show rolls on; details of that are below.

Where: The Bella Union, upstairs at Trades Hall, corner of Lygon and Victoria streets, Melbourne
When: 8:30 PM, first Wednesday of the month
Tickets: $14 pre-sale (inc. booking fee), $15 on the door; book tickets now via the Bella Union web site.

Reviews

‘Bizarre, random, but frequently hilarious … the laughs were many’ – Matt Smith, Laugh Track (Crikey’s comedy blog)

‘very charming and frequently hilarious – 9/10′ – Liam Pieper, RHUM

Past Seasons

Monthly show at Bella Union, Melbourne Trades Hall

Below are links to summaries of the action from our monthly shows at Bella Union, where you can also find photos and videos:

Session One (February 2nd, 2011) featuring Nick Caddaye as dragonborn ranger Pikachu, Andy McClelland as minotaur music promoter Gax Garyguy, Geraldine Quinn as half-human, half-horse, half-mathematician grammar cleric Tmesis, and Scott Edgar as dwarven druid Ironbeard Muntingbone. Recap here.

Session Two (March 2nd, 2011) featuring Amanda Buckley as a savvy hunter (of bargains), Sean Fabri as a somewhat “precious” wizard, Scott Brennan as a dancing dwarf and Steven “Gatesy” Gates going the full bard. Recap coming soon!

Late Night Dungeon Crawl – our late night shows on March 30th, April 6th, April 13th and April 20th – featured guests from all over the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, including Dave Bloustien (Sydney), Laura Davis (Perth) and DeAnne Smith (Canada).

Session Three (May 4th, 2011) was Dungeon Crawl: A New Hope – for what else could we do on Star Wars Day but a Star Wars special? Our guests Adam McKenzie, Clem Bastow, Aamer Rahman and Scott Edgar went on a quest to steal secret Imperial plans for the rebel alliance! Recap here.

Session Four (June 1st, 2011) featured Brenna Courtney Glazebrook as a giant woman, Karin Muiznieks as a being of dubious sexuality, Casey Bennetto as an Old Man of the Forest and Jimmy James Eaton as Conan the Librarian, a mismatched band of adventurers who went on a quest into their very souls! Recap here.

Session Five (July 6th, 2011) was Dungeon Crawl and the Deathly Philosopher Prince’s Goblet of Azkaban, a love letter to the boy wizard on the eve of his final film. Hogwarts students and teachers Brenna Courtney Glazebrook, Karen Pickering, Louise Joy McCrae and Lawrence Leung searched for an eighth horcrux in order to defeat Voldemort’s less known brother, Gary. Recap coming soon!

Sydney, November 2010

A special one-off northern invasion occurred on November 8, 2010, when Dungeon Crawl went underground at the Laugh Garage!

Our party of east-coast adventurers featured Dave Bloustien the multiclass fighter/lover, Amanda Buckley as the cleric of the domestic Goddess, Dave Harmon as a halfling thief more interested in stealing from his companions than the monsters, Carlo Richie as a human who’d put all his skill points into fishing – but lost his family heirloom fishing rod, and Eddie Perfect as a bard who specialised in jingles for products no-one wants (and whose chosen instrument was the piano). As they struggled against the odds, each other, and who exactly was carrying the piano around on the trip into a cave, they managed to save a hapless village from marauding goblins, savage wolves and a giant (no really) dragon.

Melbourne Fringe 2010

Our first return season saw us back at Gertrude’s Brown Couch for three nights in October 2010!

Session one, at 10:30 PM on Tuesday October 5, guest starred Kate O’Neill (McGuffin, Two in a Million) as Colin, the Goliath Fighter with a golfbag full of weapons whose relationship status was “It’s Complicated”; Adam McKenzie (The Hounds) as an Orc Thief named Clunk (“it’s the sound locks make when I pick them”) who had mastered every thief art except “ninja smoke”; Scott Gooding (A Study in Scarlet (A Study of…), The Gift Horse) as Mosely, a dwarven druid who looked like he’d just come from Burning Man and who involuntarily changed into a badger when exposed to fire; and Bart Freebairn (Tears and Treasure) as a geriatric cleric who couldn’t remember the name of his god, where he left his pants or indeed his own name, but travelled with a Steptoe-style cart full of all kinds of rubbish.

Session two, 10:30 PM on Thursday, October 7, featured Scott Gooding (A Study in Scarlet (A Study of…), The Gift Horse) as Manderson, the emo bard/fighter who tried to destroy his enemies with awful poetry; Sean Fabri (McGuffin) as Maribyrnong, Scourge of Children, a human fighter of questionable morals; Toby Halligan (Political Asylum) as Sparklepants the gay elf (“gelfling”) wizard, and Richard Watts (writer, DJ and broadcaster) as Wolfric, a dastardly druid who worshipped unwholesome powers and couldn’t stand emo poetry. They all had father issues, so it seemed only appropriate that the mastermind behind the disease wracking the fair town of Tamworth was none other than Sparklepants’ unsupportive Dad, Andrew Reznor, who had been possessed by blasphemous fungal spores. In the end they solved the problem by popping his bloated head.

Session three, at the earlier time of 6 PM on Saturday, October 9, was a sell out! The audience were treated to Sean Fabri’s human swashbuckler; Karin Muiznieks (The Gift Horse, World War Wonderful) as a psychotherapist who used monsters own issues against them; and Andrew McClelland (Truth Be Told) – half-giant, half-halfling – and Casey Bennetto (Keating!, The Drowsy Drivers, Half-Arsed Thursdays) – half-troll – as a pair of bards of the dancing and singing varieties, respectively. Their task was to find the source of a magical taint ruining a ranger’s forest, and despite splitting the party they managed to find the necromancer enacting the foul sorcery at the heart of the disturbance. Despacthing his undead minions, however, they found common ground over the fact that they all felt as though someone else was controlling their lives – and ended the game by singing a rousing song against the tyrrany of the Dungeon Master!

Comedy Festival 2010

Our first season ran late on Wednesday nights during the 2010 Melbourne International Comedy Festival at Gertrude’s Brown Couch in Fitzroy. The three sessions featured guest improvisers and comedians from across the festival!

Session one featured cabaret superstar Karin Muiznieks as Celery Blamange the rune-preist, Impro Melbourne’s Jason Geary as Beryl the human wizard, Axis of Awesome frontman Jordan Raskopoulos as Griznak the Half-Orc multi-class fighter/fighter, and the Gruen Transfer’s Wil Anderson as Nudge Nudge, the dwarf fighter. Their quest was to free enslaved villagers from a local dragon, who was using them as slave labour to search for the missing key to his girldfriend’s chastity belt. She wasn’t so keen, however, and gave the party invisible BMX bikes to help them destroy her “lover”.

Session two starred Good News Week writer and Puppy Fight Social Club creator Dave Bloustien as an elderly illusionist; writer, blogger and cosplayer Clem Bastow as the half-elf druid Malcolm Turnbull; returning dungeon crawler Jordan Raskopoulos as the rogue Queerhand Fondlesax; and actor and comedian Dave Thornton as an Eskimo fighter. Awaking at the bottom of a pit in a necormancer’s tower, they managed to escape and spoil his evil plans.

Session three’s party were the Anarchist Guild Social Committee’s fearless leader Nick Caddaye, who arrived with a character sheet for David Boon, human barbarian; by now crowd favourite Jordan Raskopoulos as a multiclass wizard/lover; Fear of a Brown Planet‘s Aamer Rahman as a Vulcan rogue; and actor, comedian and improviser Toby Truslove as a pacifist Presbyterian cleric. Tasked with finding a magical mushroom to cure the mayor’s son, they are ambushed by a dragon but managed to escape in a tremendous explosion, despite the rogue’s defection, with bucketfuls of cash.