Carl-Einar Häckner
Host & Magic Comedy
Sweden

Swedish comedy magician Carl-Einar Hackner pulls off that fiendishly difficult trick of appearing utterly clueless yet managing to pitch and pace this show perfectly. And all this to the obvious delight of an audience which seems to know they are laughing against their better judgment but also appears to be totally in on the joke. It is a shambles, but a brilliantly executed one.

Hackner’s style is nothing new. Elsewhere in the perfectly organised, disorganised chaos, Hackner’s own personality keeps the crowd involved, making full use of an obviously exaggerated loose grasp of the English language, at one point even seeming unable to pronounce his own name.

Amid this, Hackner does not really have to fall back on comedy songs to fill out his set but aided by a pleasant guitar accompaniment also has it’s charm. A song about dreaming about playing in U2 is the highlight, before his climatic Chinese egg cups trick literally brings the house, or at least part of the roof, down. [edited by the Rose d’Or]

For more information go to:
www.hackner.to

Clak!, Clak!
Visual Comedy
Spain

Clak!, Clak! play parts of big movies, without spoken words, but with sound and the appropriate film music. For movie addicts and fans this special kind of comedy is very attractive, but you don’t have to be an addict to appreciate it.

A raptor in Jurassic Park is about to devour a child. Viewers are asked to text whether escape or death should follow. Zorro’s sword-fight with a Catherine Zeta-Jones look-alike becomes a tap dance, a fist fight, a bull fight. And what they do to Moulin Rouge is very hilariously rude.

Clak! is masterful. It's circus clowning, not theatre. The stage appears to limit them. They constantly threaten to invade the audience. Their humour will appear crude to some, but it's memorable and entertaining.
(Peter Andrews, Fring Report, Edinburgh, 2005) [edited by the Rose d’Or]

For more information go to:
www.capaiespasa.com/clak
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IRfrvmJwqs

Hans Teeuwen
Stand-Up Comedy
Holland

At his best, Teeuwen (pronounced Tay-when) is about as funny as funny gets. Orthodoxies? He hates 'em, not least those of a comedy show. So his big opener is an attack of crippling mock-nerves - “It's going to be hilarity at the top of our priority list,” he stutters, amid dry heaves - before contorting his roguish face to unnerve his audience. Because Teeuwen is not, joking aside, a comedian who needs our say-so. He goes off on long flights of fancy, talking about imaginary films, or about the underwater spaceship he chances upon on holiday in France.

Comic invention has often been compared to jazz improvisation - Teeuwen makes the comparison palpable, launching into his stupid analysis of his alien captors' decor with all the passion of John Coltrane both paying tribute to and trashing My Favorite Things. His debate about which he prefers, colour or black-and-white films - a pathetic issue rendered rainbow-coloured by the range and depth of his responses - is the funniest thing I'll see all year.
(Times, London 2008) [edited by the Rose d’Or]

For more information go to:
www.hansteeuwen.net