[1] They attended Rusden State College, studying to be drama teachers: at a party, Kearney broke an egg on Gladwin's head, and the two men recognised a common sense of humour.
[7] Their comedic approach has been typified as undergoing two main phases: confrontational and deliberately offensive humour gave way in the mid-80s to much more considered slapstick comparable to silent film comedy of the early 20th century.
[8] Both men appeared in Geoff Hooke’s production of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (abbreviated to Mahoganny) at the Contemporary Performance Centre, located in the Hawthorn Congregational Church, in late 1981.
An unsuccessful attempt was made by the Playbox Theatre Company to mount a production of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot some years later in which they were to be featured cast members alongside either Frank Thring[10] or Warren Mitchell.
In late 1981, critic Peter Weiniger wrote:‘Tough, zany, threatening, but always highly original their humour almost defies definition with a range that stretches from sheery [sic] anarchy to carefully controlled mayhem.’[12] For months later, the same critic lauded them as authors of 'silent comedy in the finest traditions of the Mack Sennett comedies and Laurel and Hardy.’[13] In August 1982, at the opening of a season at the Last Laugh Theatre Restaurant, Kearney broke his leg on stage.
We were seen as new and exciting and above all refreshing.’[18] The Perrier award led to increased coverage in the mainstream media, including an appearance on The Don Lane Show.
At the end of 1984 they launched what was to become their longest-lasting and most successful show, Outer Sink, an ‘Epic Rock Comedy Odyssey Performance Art Dance, Theatre-in-Education Sort of Thing’.
[26] The duo's success at Edinburgh in particular had raised expectations for other Australian (particularly Melbourne) acts at that event: Gladwin observed that ‘This year it was possible to travel to Edinburgh and meet just about all the people you work with in Australia.’[27] Outer Sink was also performed at the 1986 Montreal International Mime Festival [28] and another show, Rampant Stupidity was successful in North America the following year.
This is most likely to have been Tennis Elbow, directed by John Thomson and starring Gladwin and Kearney alongside Lance Curtis, Elsa Davies, Geoff Kelso, Mark Little, Sai McEnna, David Swann, and featuring ‘The St Kilda Esplanade, a galvanised barbecue, Homicide, a tennis match and a toilet joke.’[31] The film is a loosely linked series of sketches based primarily around a tennis match in which a sophisticated playboy repeatedly hits the ball an unfeasibly long distance, and his opponent enthusiastically, and improbably, is able to return it each time through superhuman effort.
[33] The 1989 television variety series The Beach Boys: Endless Summer included apparently specially-filmed Los Trios Ringbarkus material as incidental comedy spots.
Filmed in 1990, starring Gladwin, Kearney, Max Cullen, Imogen Annesley and Moya O'Sullivan and directed by Ron Cobb, Garbo opened in May, 1992.
It was commercially disastrous, described by one journalist as the 'film that killed Los Trios Ringbarkus.’[37] A decade later, Kearney reflected that he and Gladwin 'knew there was something wrong with it, but we hoped it could be seen in a good light.
It’s a big source of regret.’ Although the pair were reported in 1983 as saying ‘they work well together because they are not close friends and their personalities are very different,’[39] Kearney later compared their 1992 split as being ‘like a marriage ending.’[40] In 2003, they briefly reformed and performed at the Melbourne Comedy Festival.