MICF: Rock Out With Your Bok Out – Lauren Bok

MICF
Rock Out With Your Bok Out
Lauren Bok
Crowded
21 April 2019
Crowded in the Vaults
to 21 April
comedyfestival.com.au

Lauren Bok

On Sunday night, when performers and audiences are counting down the minutes until they can sleep, I took my own advice and saw #OneMoreShow. One more Gibbo-award-nominated  #kickarsefeminist show where the audience were singing along to Queen before the show even started: Rock Out With Your Bok Out.

Melbourne comedian and performer Lauren Bok's thought her new show would be tits and puns, but you need a bit more to get one of those award nominations. So she put a Led Zepplin t-shirt over her creation-myth-inspired sequin pasties and added some rock-star stories, her personal learning curve of the mastery of the rules and lingo of polyamory, and her nephew's potty training.

The connection between some of her stories doesn't always add to her bigger story, but who cares when there's mime to make a narrative connection. It's not good mime, but it's wonderfully hilarious and I'll be back next time if only just for the mime

MICF: Either Side of Everything – Wil Greenway

MICF
Either Side of Everything
Wil Greenway
Crowded
20 April 2019
Crowded in the Vaults
to 21 April
comedyfestival.com.au

Wil Greenway

Describing a story can never do it justice. Like describing the taste of a ripe warm fig picked from a tree or a cheese sandwich made with homemade bread and butter, words can only hint at the experience.

Wil Greenaway tells a story, or four stories, in Either Side of Everything. There are figs and cheese sandwiches. And two friends in a car on a road trip, an old woman with spiky white hair and "fuck the police" tattooed on her ankle, and a bug called Brian. And it floats and leaps through time and makes you know the entree you want for your last meal. (Vegetarian Su Roll from Ying Chow in Adelaide or vegetable tempura from anywhere in Japan.)

The story is sad and still makes you wonder why you don't feel that happy all the time, even if you're wiping away a tear. It's just a silly story, but it's a story we are told. I will read a story to any child that wants to hear a story because it's one of the most lovely things to do. Greenaway lets us feel like a child curled in a lap of someone who loves them and being told their favourite story.

Sorry, that's taking the metaphor too far. This isn't like that; it's a story for adults and it's damn funny. But it is really lovely to be told a story.

While not comparable, Either Side of Everything reminded me of the story telling by Daniel Kitson and Gavin Osborn. (I'm seeing Kitson tomorrow, so have no idea what his show is about this year.), Kitson himself is a fan Greenway. As now I am, too.

He's in a small room by the river where 30 people would be a crowd. The only fair way to end his run tomorrow is to overcrowd the room.

Fit another show in. You won't regret it.

And, you can sit here before or after and have a beer with a toastie or a cheese platter.

View from Pilgrim bar. Phone snap by A-M Peard

MICF: Patrick Collins Mime Consultant

MICF
Patrick Collins Mime Consultant
Enter Closer and Crowded
19 April 2019
Tasma Terrace
to 21 April
comedyfestival.com.au

Patrick Collins

When I hear the word "mime", I smile politely and try to scrub out the memory of Marcel Marceau's Bip trapped in an invisible box that you can't put a blanket over to calm him down.

I don't know why I do this because mime is the best. Mime shows are ones where I have been blown away by the original approach to old ways of telling stories and laughed so much that I'm genuinely embarrassed (Trygve Wakenshaw). And at the blurry end of the comedy festival, Patrick Collins did the same.

Patrick wears a shirt and tie because he's off to the office where he's a mime consultant. He knows mime IS important and that there are mime emergencies and run-of-the-mill questions that need answering every day. And, of course, mime artists can talk and interact and get out of their invisible boxes.

Sitting on his office chair leaves the audience grateful for the-most-uncomfortable-chairs-in-any-festival-venue but what takes his mix of stand-up and sketch it to a Golden-Gibbo-award-nomination level is story and character. Fortnite dancing is so much better with a story about teenage boys and the best belly flop ever would just be "do-that-again!" if it didn't happen on a cruise.

Throw in magic, erotica and some things that really happened to Patrick and this mime consultation lets us see the invisible from a new perspective.

MICF: Misery – Neil Triffett

MICF
Misery
Neil Triffett
Enter Closer and Crowded
17 April 2019
Tasma Terrace
to 21 April
comedyfestival.com.au

Neil Triffett

There have been a lot of positive upbeat isn't-life-awseome shows this festival, so it was great to get back to the real source of comedy: Misery.

Misery, a keyboard, a ukulele and an opening song that's about being a self-indulgent performer.

Neil Triffett has had some difficult times, even if he is a white bloke in his 30s. There was being nine in 1996 and living in Port Arthur in Tasmania. It wasn't so much the horrendous massacre, but the assigned school counsellor with large breasts. And the later regret of not buying a goat in India.

Neil is at his best when he's singing. He songs are full of wit and character and are totally sing-along-able. He's also at his best when he's telling stories about himself. But this is a new work. There are lots of ideas that are still finding a way to come together and tell the bigger story that's clearly hiding in there.

It's also a personal work that leaves many questions unanswered. Neil genuinely connects with his audience, who are on his side and want to gang up on the people who have caused him misery. But we want to know more about his mum not being ok with him being gay, and the double punch of a break up at the same time a feature film didn't find its audience. When an audience are left guessing, they don't have the space to really connect with the performer. Or, audiences are total nosey parkers and want to know more.

And give Emo the Musical a watch on Netflix. Just because some critics were "ouch", doesn't mean there aren't lots of people who will love it.

MICF: Too Much – Eve Ellenbogen

MICF
Too Much
Eve Ellenbogen
Enter Closer and Crowded
11 April 2019
Crowded in the Vaults: Pilgrim Bar
to 21 April
comedyfestival.com.au

Eve Ellenbogen

Even Ellenbogen moved from New York to Melbourne in 2015. She's still noticing how being Jewish in Melbourne is different from being Jewish in New York, but knows that referencing The Nanny sit com will bring most audiences up to speed if they've never had a bagel from Glicks.

She was a Raw Comedy state finalist in 2016 and 2017 and she's often told that being herself is Too Much. Fuck that. If you can't make noise and be honest by your mid-30s, what's the point?

She grew up loving Disney princess films but sees them with a far more critical eye now, especially as she's now as ancient as the mid-30s Wicked Queen in Snow White. Those films are weird and still contribute to girls aspiring to be skinny, quiet princesses for their men. It's easy to be critical of such boring and dated ideals, but Eve also knows that she still defaults to wanting male approval. She's working on it. She's still enjoying Tinder, but she's working on her need for approval.

There are times when it feels like she's pushing the point about how people can't take jokes about sex and women, until she reveals some of the reasons she's determined to make that point. She's still finding the sweet spot between her on-stage character and self and working on linking her stories into her bigger story. But that only comes as you keep doing shows and I think we'll be hearing a lot more from Eve in the near future. I'll sure be there.

And she's performing in my new favourite MICF venue – Pilgrim Bar on Federation Wharf. Head down to the river on the Federation Square side of Princes Bridge. There's great food and drink, the best view of the river, and the shows are in an underground vault that feels like being in a round brick bunker waiting for the bombs to fall.

MICF: Poolside – Oliver Coleman

MICF
Poolside
Oliver Coleman
Enter Closer and Crowded
Tasma Terrace 4
31 March 2019
To 7 April
comedyfestival.com.au

Oliver Coleman

My review is in Time Out.