What do you call a room full of 200 lawyers? Fun! Yes, it’s true. The Cremorne cinema was packed mostly with lawyers who came to see fellow-lawyer, friend and funny man Nick Abrahams’ one man show about LAWYERS. And about AI, Japan, Woody Allen, Queensland and MORE. Nick covered all this in 80 minutes. Audience members greeted one another with bon amie, cheered Nick and laughed lots. The biggest laugh was when Nick flashed up on the big cinema screen an image of a ‘senior partner’. The cartoon was of a super fit man holding a flashy bicycle and smiling. Why smiling? Because senior partners delegate all the work to lesser mortals like regular partners, take credit for their work and have time to stay fit and ride around on bicycles. The sound of 200 lawyers laughing and booing at this image was very amusing and revealing to us non-lawyers.
The show is by-lined as ‘The Seinfeld of Tokyo’ and with a name like “Abrahams”, I was expecting some terrific Jewish humour. But as it happened, I was sitting next to a talkative lawyer who went to school with Nick in Brisbane. I got the low down on Nick without me even asking him many questions. No, Nick is not Jewish. Yes, he was a very funny boy in school. Everyone adored the quirky young Nick. Now, he practices part-time in commercial law in a major Sydney firm.
So if the “Seinfeld” part of the show’s subtitle is just a PR hook, where does Tokyo come into it? Nick has had a varied career. After amusing all the kids at school in Brissie, he became a lawyer in Sydney, then a lawyer in Tokyo, then film writer in L.A. where he met with Woody Allen, then a studio executive and then a father. He put the photo of his newborn son up on the cinema screen. It seems fatherhood caused him to rethink his odd career trajectory and the family returned to Sydney and Nick to lawyering.
He brought back with him some bragging L.A. traits. For example, he just had to tell us that a party for his company, ‘Spike’, cost a million dollars, $200,000 of which was to buy condoms with the name ‘Spike’ printed on them to give to those attending the lavish event. And, of course, he put up on the big screen a photo of the condoms. There were also photos of him mostly naked in a spa and in a photoshoot. All in good fun, of course, and all about him.
Nick is a virtuoso. He can deal with L.A. hyperactive types, non-humorous Japanese, overworked lawyers and hard-nosed clients. He is also a polymath. Check out his website (below) to see his quirky clips and his serious presentations on such varied topics as non-fungible tokens, crypto currency, and the FUTURE. The Australian Financial Review says “Nick Abrahams is a digital transformation guru”, so it must be true.
Thursday 28th May at 7pm.
