88 Results

Patrick O’Duffy writes… Laura Davis is 25 years old but still feels like she’s pretending to be an adult, still working out how to assemble the jigsaw puzzle of life.

It’s safe to say there are few comedy shows in the festival that come close to Sabrina D’Angelo’s Body Poet. It’s a strange and somewhat uncomfortable mix of performance art and abstract comedy that has the potential to go somewhere but is stranded by a lack of structure or storyline.

It’s hard not to like Sammy J. He’s got a bird-like appeal that makes his every movement slightly comical on its own. And in a show without his trademark puppets, Potentially still shows Sammy J can hold his own.

Patrick O’Duffy writes… In 1970s Melbourne, Bunny met Mad-Dog in a pub and a whirlwind, drug-soaked romance was born. It was a time of cheap drugs and luxurious moustaches, of Southern Comfort and V8 Holdens, when people smuggled bread into Chinese restaurants and you could be blonde enough to never need to parallel park

Patrick O’Duffy writes… This is Dave’s first Comedy Festival show, after doing 6-minutes spot in group gigs like the Comedy Hole and the Giggle Gulag. He’s got some great material about sex, footy, women and how Sydney and Melbourne are different, and he’s ready to repeat them over and over again until he gets a [...]

There’s no doubt that a night out at a Wil Anderson show will guarantee you a solid laugh. An old hand at radio and a familiar face on our screens, he’s dominated every medium but it’s when he struts his stuff on stage that he’s at his best.

Nina D. Flanagan writes… The crux of this show was the pitfalls of racial stereotyping. Hing discusses career success based purely on positive racism, beginning with a boss who knew he would be hard working because of his ethnicity, despite numerous obvious and irresponsible exploits. Relationship failure due to his girlfriend’s misguided attempt at avoiding [...]

Mark Pearce writes… It’s a mystery to me why gay marriage has become such a vexed political issue in Australia. If anything gay marriage, when it comes, will underscore the ‘normalization’ of homosexuality and probably knock off some of its radical activist edge.

Patrick O’Duffy writes… Lemons. Robots. Voluptuous. Cage fighting. Obliquely. These and other words and phrases are pinned up around the stage, and over the course of her show Alice Fraser works all of them into her act – sometimes seamlessly, sometimes more obviously. Similarly, some of the complex, personal concepts in her act fit in [...]

Is masculinity still relevant? That’s the burning question of Simon Taylor’s one man debate, a witty, cleverly crafted and stylishly delivered comedy show. Taylor presents a self exploration in a Janus-style fashion, with his opposite traits of manliness and femininity on display for the audience to laugh at and enjoy.

Nicole Humphreys writes… Shenoah Allen and Mark Chavez – The Pajama Men – are talented comedians.  They both impress the audience with their assorted repertoire of characters, facial gymnastics and vocal abilities.

Cathy Alexander writes… The poster was terrible, my vodka was in a plastic cup and there was almost no one in the audience. So it was just as well Geraldine Quinn was hilarious.

Nicole Humphreys writes… Bart is a quirky and entertaining performer – The Age of Wonder is thankfully not your run-of-the-mill comedy gig.  His age of wonder is childhood youth and his cleverly sculpted jokes let the audience reminisce and think about their versions of his anecdotes.

If you’ve ever wondered what it might feel like to be slapped in the face with a dildo, Slutmonster goes some of the way to making that a viable possibility. Thankfully in this instance, the dildo-slapping experience is happening to somebody else. Literally.

Patrick O’Duffy writes… ‘Nob Happy Sock’? What does that mean? Wait, check the poster. Apparently this is a show by Simon Keck about… how he tried to kill himself a few years ago? Does that sound like a good night out? Possibly not, but here’s the thing – yes, it’s a comedy show about attempted [...]

Lawrence Leung has garnered a fair bit of street cred and a large devoted audience in past years, partly due to his solid shows at the comedy festival but also his two series on the ABC (of which more is needed please, Aunty). So it was with no surprise that Lawrence Leung’s Part-Time Detective Agency [...]

It’s admirable how comfortable Jeff Green is on the stage, as he bounds out from behind the curtain to a crowd that knows him well. A regular performer at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, his material is solid. Relationships, children, stories from his life, nothing too risky, everything rather safe, and so many laughs that [...]

Patrick O’Duffy writes… Identical twins in similar shirts, Ben and James Stevenson could have taken the easy way out and done a show about being twins. Instead, they’ve put together a show about deciding whether to give up regular jobs to become comedians, complete with a tally board for noting the pros and cons of [...]

Nina D Flanagan writes… Live on Air with Poet Laureate Telia Nevile was a gamble. For the first ten minutes of this show, I was resolving never to see comedy at the Northcote Town Hall, but then I understood what was going on. This is not standard comedy festival fare: if you go in looking [...]

Patrick O’Duffy writes… The Grand Guignol was a 20th century Parisian theatre that became famous for its graphic horror shows. Dave Bloustien borrows the concepts and aesthetics of Grand Guignol to present a show that mixes comedy, puppetry, theatre and storytelling into a rich, fascinating whole.

Patrick O’Duffy writes… The first thing you see when entering the Council Chambers to see Ronny Chieng is the giant Audience Rating Machine on the stage – an array of tubes filled with various numbers of ping-pong balls, like a giant bar graph. It’s there, Ronny explains, to help judge how well the audience meets [...]

Nina D. Flanagan says… The Spokesman is not for the easily offended. Maybe we should just say it’s for the hard to offend. It’s part of Amos’s charm that he is so comfortable on stage that he can converse with the audience and improvise, but the charm tarnishes a little when most of that improvising [...]

Patrick O’Duffy writes… A lone cowboy rides into an ambush after refusing to replace his horse with a Datsun. A book lover is trapped in a sepulchral library. A supervillain applies for a job in the fast food industry. And then lights flicker, music blares and the story changes again! All part and parcel of [...]

Patrick O’Duffy writes… Rob Hunter brings his late-night talk show of hatred back to the Comedy Festival for a third year, hellbent on insulting some of Melbourne’s most loved comedians. But is it funny in its own right, or is this the kind of car-crash comedy where it’s uncomfortable but you just can’t look away?

For those who aren’t prepared for him, Paul Foot can take a bit of getting used to. He explodes on stage dressed in a silver jacket and tie, a combination padlock through his belt loop. His mannerisms are of someone you might find on the 86 tram to Bundoora late at night. The shock factor [...]

Patrick O’Duffy writes… ‘This show’s mostly about words, not much about vampires, so if you’re keen on vampires you might be disappointed,’ warns Mark Butler at the start of his set. Unfortunately, the show turns out not to be that much about words either – or to be all that good.

Patrick O’Duffy writes… Xavier Michelides is not a morning person. His morning routine of coffee, TV and general grumbling has to be just right, or it puts him in a bad mood for the rest of the day – a mood in which he can’t help but think of all the things that might make [...]

Nina D. Flanagan writes… In Douchebag, Josh Thomas discusses making children cry and international exploitation, and somehow still elicits laughs rather than disgust from the audience. It is a testament to his comedic talents that he can deliver his misdeeds into your lap, while having you chortle along with him.

Greg “Fleety” Fleet has remained an unlikely fixture of the Australian stand-up comedy scene for decades, a meandering raconteur whose anecdotes flow thick and fast and often involve unintended mayhem. Fleet’s experience working crowds and getting audiences on side despite risqué material – most notably a surfeit of jokes about being a former heroin junkie [...]

Everyone who went to see Jennifer Wong in Spineless last night probably realises it wasn’t her best night. The hesitant, nervous delivery of jokes worked for a while, but wore thin. She quickly abandoned the theme of trying to get a book published, let alone write one, within five minutes. Taking us through the intricacies [...]

Nina D. Flanagan writes… Part university lecture, part stand-up comedy, part sexy music video, The Psychology of Laughter was unlike anything I had ever seen before. It was consistently interesting with patches of riotous hilarity. There was a sign displayed outside the room warning of coarse language and adult themes, and Callan looks a bit [...]

Patrick O’Duffy writes… The DJ Illuminati are here in the form of Andrew McClelland (a comedian who DJs) and Kieran O’Sullivan (a DJ who comedies). Both run clubs, both love pop music and both are here at MICF to teach you – yes, you – about the art of the decks and mixer.

Patrick O’Duffy writes… Previously on Space Force, Commander Bec Rogers was deep in battle with the terrible Space Brain! Although armed with a blaster pistol and zero-gravity kung fu skills, the monster’s telekinetic powers were too much for her, until –

There’s something incredibly likeable about David O’Doherty, that I’m sure everyone that goes to see him comes away wishing he was their friend. Before he even opens his mouth you feel an affinity with him, and over the hour of the show you’re exposed to an hour of hilarious but gentle comedy.

Dixie Longate is back for this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival, but with her luggage gone on to Victoria’s deep south without her there ain’t quite enough Tupperware for a party. So instead of the full-blown Tupperware show complete with catalogues that audiences experienced last year, she’s here to tell us stories of her travels [...]