Last time Nick Giannopoulos was interviewed by Neos Kosmos‘ Nelly Skoufatoglou, his latest Wog Boy film was screening across Australian cinemas.
“The ‘wogboy’ fans have never stopped asking me if I was ever going to do another one,” Giannopoulos explained then.
“As soon as the lockdowns started in Melbourne, I made a decision to not just sit around doing nothing but to be productive and finally finish off the script for the third Wog Boy film.”
The momentum of creation kept on since, with Giannopoulos making a comeback now, just over a year later.
But this time on stage, where the Greek Australian comic returns for a series of live shows in a national tour.
‘Wog Life’ features two fan-favourites over the years stage characters – The Cleaning Lady & The Taxi Driver.
The show’s trailer gives a taste of hilarious dialogues to expect on stage that anyone familiar with the quirks of migrant heritage can relate to.
– If you pay cash, is [sic] cheaper, says the taxi driver.
– No, you can’t pay cash to buy tickets online, Giannopoulos replies.
And the cleaning lady reacts:
“No cash?! What I do [sic] with all the money I put under my tomates in the backyiari?”
The taxi driver again: “Hey Greek lady…where [sic] you live?”.
Giannopoulos is considered a trailblazer Australian artist, making ‘wog’ comedy hip through a trajectory which kickstarted in the late 1980s with stage show ‘Wogs out of Work’.
The show was meant to run for two weeks, it ran for three years, and was seen by over 700,000 people across Australia. Its success led to the creation of the TV sitcom ‘Acropolis Now’, the first prime time show on free to air TV to feature predominantly non-English speaking background Aussies as the stars.
Giannopoulos’ first film ‘The Wog Boy’ was out in 2000, followed by ‘Wog Boy 2: Kings of Mykonos’ (2010). The recent third instalment, ‘Wog Boys Forever’ (2022) reached the list of highest grossing Australian films released that year from the first weekend of screenings.
‘Wog Life’ is coming to Melbourne’s Palait Theatre on 16, 17 February before travelling to Sydney in March. The show’s tour includes stops in Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane and Wollongong.