Bonds remain strong for Umbilical Brothers’ David and Shane

Other duos may have cut the cord years ago, but The Umbilical Brothers remain perfectly in sync even after almost 30 years. And they’re bringing their Speedmouse show to town.

Kylie Knight

4 min read

August 29, 2019 - 9:03AM

Quest Newspapers

The Umbilical Brothers will perform Speedmouse at Redcliffe.

Moreton Life

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DAVID Collins reckons a teacher once told him he wasn’t funny and Shane Dundas was told he’d never use his voice professionally. After 28 years as the internationally-successful comedy duo The Umbilical Brothers, who’s laughing now?

The pair, renowned for their hilarious blend of mime and sound, will bring their popular show Speedmouse to Redcliffe Entertainment Centre on September 6. And if you think you’ve seen it all before, think again. David chats with Moreton Life ahead of the show.

Q. Can you take me back to the very beginning when you and Shane met?

A. We met in an all-male strip revue. The first night we took our clothes off and the audience laughed so much we thought `this is the start of a burgeoning comedy career’. That’s not true … I kinda wish that was the case … We met in acting school and we realised very quickly we had the same sense of humour. We use to go and watch Jackie Chan movies at the weekend, come back and make all the sound effects ourselves. Then in second year (1989) we created what is now The Umbilical Brothers because we had a mime assessment due. We thought mime is so boring because it’s so slow. But once you add sound … mime just becomes 1000 per cent quicker. We started creating shows.

Q. How has your performance evolved?

A. We really like audiences coming to the theatre. It’s so easy just to stay on your couch these days and watch whatever … What we try to do is create a show you can only get in the live setting. We’ve done this show (Speedmouse) so many times and it’s such a popular show, which is why people keep asking for it. We don’t want to do the same gags that people know. The bones of the show are the same but the individual gags inside each routine have changed. One of our favourite things is throwing things at the other person in the duo (which they haven’t seen or heard before). It’s a game of tennis on stage.

Q. Does that happen much?

A. Absolutely. Most of the show is fairly tightly scripted but you have to have sections of the show which are open to improvisation every single night. Audiences are not dumb, they know when you’re bored of material. It’s like that story in mythology about the boat — they replace so many parts of the ship that no old parts of the ship remain, it’s a completely new ship. That’s how Speedmouse feels to us.

Q. You’ve been performing a long time … bands break up … why haven’t you?

A. Like any relationship, just get the hell away from each other. Shane lives in Canberra and I live in Sydney. The only time we get together is to perform. We don’t rehearse.

Q. You guys are in sync with each other, if you don’t rehearse how does that happen?

A. It’s always just been there, which is the reason we called ourselves The Umbilical Brothers. We’ve always had this connection. We’re just on each other’s wavelengths. It’s just how it happens and that’s how we can improvise. For shows like Speedmouse, which have a lot of movement and sound effects in it, it’s unbelievable how Shane can keep up with it. I think Shane is so talented, it’s insane. You’d be able to find somebody to replace me, but you would never find somebody to replace Shane.

Q. Who works harder on stage then? It seems like you’re doing all the moving around and he’s just standing there making noise?

A. That’s kind of true, but Shane sweats way more than me. Maybe he’s doing more work. I don’t sweat but he’s completely drenched by the end of the show. So, let’s say Shane.

Shane Dundas and David Collins, The Umbilical Brothers. Picture: Ric Frearson

Q. How do you come up with ideas? Is there alcohol involved?

A. Shane doesn’t drink alcohol but I drink enough for the two of us. Most ideas are written down after a show. Most nights in hotel rooms after the show, we just stuff around and more often than not things will get written down in notebooks. When it’s time to invent a new show, that notebook is opened and all the notes are put into a bucket and stirred around and tipped out and you try to put them in some kind of order. And then we do it in front of an audience and see. It’s very easy with comedy, if they’re not laughing it’s not working.

Q. Best ever gig?

A. Woodstock ’99. We went on after James Brown on the east stage in front of over 100,000 people. The routine we did, we invented in the trailer about 10 minutes before we went on. We told them we were drug inspectors and killed it, just killed it.

Q. Worst ever gig?

A. The worst was 20 minutes later on the west stage, when they put us on after this heavy metal band with only a few thousand people. We didn’t want to do the same thing we’d done on the other stage because we thought maybe people had seen it, but we were wrong. So we did something safe, something we knew worked and it just died. They went from heavy metal to these two guys doing movement and sound and it was horrible. You could hear people saying, ‘you suck’. Unfortunately, because we went so well on the first performance in front of 100,000 people, they televised the second performance. So, the only thing Americans saw was us dying in front of a few thousand people after a heavy metal band. (But) on one hand could I count the amount of bad gigs we’ve had. That’s not bad after 28 years.