MICF: Kate Mclennan

MICF

The Duck's Nuts

Kate McLennan

1 April 2014

Melbourne Town Hall, Lunch Room

to 20 April 2014

comedyfestival.com.au

Kate McLennan in a fluffy yellow duck suit. What's not to love!

Kate's back doing stand up this year after selling out a hotel room with Wes Snelling last year. I like the idea of her alternating a stand up show with a scripted one – and a year of no new stories about Pockets is about as much as we can take.

Pockets is Kate's dad. Along with her mum, sister and niece, he's been a part of Kate's stand up since the beginning and her friends and fans adore him as much as they do Kate.

Kate's 34 this year and she doesn't have a Thermomix or a baby, which means awkward questions and quiet judging if she cooks for her friends. The Duck's Nuts is about her ducks not lining up in neat rows, but still getting drunk, spewing and not checking the oil in a car that's worth less than a Thermomix. 

She nails mid-30s angst with the hilarious glee it deserves and, don't worry Kate, I'm 45 and I don't have a Thermomix.

I also wrote about this on AussieTheatre.com

Return season: Standard Double

Good news if you missed Kate McLennan and Wes Snelling in Double Standard at this year's Comedy Festival. They've booked themselves back into The Blackman from 9–20 July.

Book here.

Quick MICF: Standard Double

Kate McLennan & Wes Snelling: Double Standard

2013 Moosehead Award recipient with the help of the Comedy Channel on Foxtel

3 April 2013

Blackburn Hotel

to 21 April

comedyfestival.com.au

For a while there weren't any seats left for Double Standard because Kate McLennan and Wes Snelling fans know that it's too wrong to even consider missing them perform, but the great news is that they've added two extra performances: Friday 19 April at 10 pm and Saturday 20 April at 5 pm. If you don't book now, you'll have to see something else and miss the show that made me so want to have quick sex and a giant Toblerone in a swish room at the Blackman.

This show lets 20ish people into a top floor room at the Blackman Hotel on St Kilda Road. It's a very nice hotel. The beds are huge, there's Charles Blackman's art everywhere, a bar and a cafe with lots of scrummy cake. But that's the a bonus, as this show would be just as terrific in a dodgy freeway-side joint where you can't lie on the sheets because they are moving.

Double Standard is series of extended sketches about folk who are in the hotel. From staff to guests, there's more story and love than in most joke-based sketch, but not enough to be upset that there's only a few minutes of each character. Some are more memorable than other, but each confirm that Kate and Wes are two of the best comic writers and performers around, and it's guaranteed to make you giggle every time you see a glass table.

It finishes on Saturday, and remember there are now two extra shows.

MICF: The final weekend

With three nights left of the comedy festival, it's time for the die hards to see five shows a night and collapse at 3am in a pool of sweat and vomit in the festival club.

So, I joined a lot of other 40-somethings at a nice civilised 6.00 pm show, grabbed a late-night 7.15 and was a bit too happy to be home by 9.00. Yep, I'm hard core, I might even make a mug of hot chocolate.

There are only two shows left of these, and there's 25 minutes between the end of Tim's and the beginning of Kate's – which makes for an awesome (and early starting) double.

Homeward Bound
Kate McLennan
20 April 2012
Victoria Hotel
to 22 April
comedyfestival.com.au

I don't think it's possible to see Kate McLennan on stage and not adore her. She's one of the funniest people around and her honest writing proves that the difference between good writing and great writing is how much it comes from the heart.

This style of stand up is different from the character-based comedy seen in earlier festivals, but terrific writers make their lives far more interesting than fiction.

A while back, Kate's was in a relationship; they'd bought Global knives together, so it was serious. But it ended. Being a performer meant that Kate moved back to Geelong with her parents, but how could her broken heart compare to her dad's prostRate cancer and her younger sister's upcoming wedding?

Naturally on her first day back in her teenage bedroom, with her raw heart was pumping pain, her sister took her to a bridal expo, which isn't as painful as the advice from her extended family about how to deal with being 31 and on the shelf.

Using the gorgeous device of letters to her baby niece (nieces and nephews really are brilliant), Kate brings us her family with hilarious observation that's sharper than a Global knife with a love that's its own lifetime guarantee.

PS. Kate, I've never been a bridesmaid!

Carry a Big Stick
Tim Ferguson 
20 April 2012
Melbourne Town Hall
to 22 April
comedyfestival.com.au

Tim and I are happy to disagree about the role of review and feedback in live performance, but all I need to say is that it was bloody lovely to sit in a room full of people who remember the 80s and the Doug Anthony Allstars juggernaut.

I first say the DAAS in the mid-ish 80s at a drunken lunch time at Adelaide Uni bar (oh how tertiary education had changed). I can't think of anyone who could own a crowd like that now. By the time they were at the 1988 Adelaide Fringe, they were in the biggest rooms and playing the Fringe club late at night. There hadn't been anything like them before. In their ripped military uniforms, they were loud, crude and treated their audience with the kind of disrespect that we wanted more of.

And more we got. Tim, Paul and Richard went on to own the biggest festivals, to fill stadiums and created cult TV with The Big Gig. I adored them, my friends adored them and everyone we knew couldn't get enough of them and we haven't seen comedy rock gods like them since.

Carry a Big Stick is Tim (the tall one) telling his story about this time and what happened after they broke up and why he wishes everyone would stop asking about his MS. If you were a DAAS fan, you don't need the likes of me to tell you that you'll love this hour with Tim.

The last two shows are pretty close to being sold out, but don't let that stop you from trying to get in.

PS. I'm now back in tertiary education and Tim is one of my teachers.

Fringe artist profiles part 4

Internet gremlins stole their original links, so here's Timothy Clark, Bron Battern, Ash Flanders and Kate McLennan.

Our AWGIE winners

With the excitement and over-exhaustion of Melbourne Fringe opening weekend, some of us may have missed the announcement of the AWGIE winners.

The AWGIES are presented by the Australian Writers Guild and recognise the "integral role the story plays in film, television, radio, interactive media and theatre." They're a pretty good one to win.

And how cool to read a list of winners and want to do a happy dance because they are all such incredible writers.

Theatre for Young Audiences
Moth
Declan Greene

Dec was far too busy at FUGLY - the best night at the Melb Fringe Club ever - to even think of anything as tacky as an award ceremony. And he's prettier than me.

Major Award
Do Not Go Gentle
Patricia Cornelius

2011 KIT DENTON FELLOWSHIP
For Courage and Excellence in Performance Writing
Kate McCartney and Kate McLennan

(Kate was also too busy doing her Fringe show, Homeward Bound.)

And, because I love both of these writers so very much.

Comedy - Situation or Narrative
Laid: Episode 4
Marieke Hardy

2011 FRED PARSONS AWARD
For Outstanding Contribution to Australian Comedy
Chris Lilley

all the AWGIE winners

Melbourne Fringe Fever Profiles

This week, Melbourne Fringe artists have been answering 20ish questions about the Fringe, Melbourne and the art that's influenced them.

It's wonderful to find at least one unexpected cultural link with every artist, but I'm realising that Sarah Collins and I are the only people who like SLH*s.

Head to AussieTheatre.com for the Fringe Fever profiles.

Here are some previews. Their name links to their profile and on their show name to their Fringe page.

Timothy Clark, a first-time Fringe comedian in 4's KIN (ha, ha...), where four young comedians show us what they can do.  (Gotta say, brilliant way to do your first show.) I met Tim in a writing for TV class, where he silenced the room with a fisting joke. He descibes the show as "good, clean smut" and has been influenced by Captain Feathersword, Sidney Lumet and Batman.

Bron Battern's doing a show with her parents and understands the incredibleness of blue cheese on pizza. Her show Sweet Child of Mine is already the most popular answer to "What other Fringe show will you NOT miss?". I first saw her in 2008 (Two Little Spiels), and she does the best onstage animals ever.

Coming up

There's not much I haven't said about the Sisters Grimm Ash Flanders and Declan Greene. There's one chance to see them at the Fringe and it's going to be FUGLY!  as they invite the likes of Angus Cerini, Post and The Rabble to try drag. You'll hate yourself if you miss it.

I was invited to their first show, Fat Camp, a few years ago and didn't go because there was no way I was going to watch kids make fun of fat people. I regret my decision (and it's a lesson to all to make sure that your media releases really reflect the nature of your show), because the Sisters may well be my favourite Melbourne company.

Kate McLennan's shows have always left me with a sore jaw from constantly smiling. She creates characters who are so real and so flawed that you have to love them. More recently she's been opening up her own life to create heartfelt and fucking hilarious work. I say it a lot, but it's the artists who really show us their hearts that we go back to see again and again. She also tells me that she's developing this Fringe show, Homeward Bound, into a book.  I'll be first in line for a copy.

Soon: Miles O'Neil, Stephen House, Jennifer Williams, Johannes Scherpenhuizen, Miranda Hill, Rob Lloyd and a heap more.

*Soy latte with honey

MELBOURNE FRINGE HINTS 3: Families are the Best Material

Families, we can run, but they'll always find us, especially if we run back to them or ask them to be in our Fringe show...

Kate McLennan is Homeward Bound

"Last year Kate broke up with her boyfriend and moved home to her Mum and Dad's." That's in the Fringe guide; I'm not gossiping.

In 2006, Melbourne fell in love with Kate when The Debutante Diaries won a whole heap of awards and made us want to wear white frilly frocks. In last Fringe's gorgeous Livin' The Dream, Kate broke away from fiction because her own life was as funny as her creations. This year we find out what happened when she had enough of living with her parents and ran to New York.

Sweet Child of Mine

The Last Tuesday Society

Bron Batten is best known as the co-creator of the super dooper Last Tuesday Society and her unforgettable animal impersonations.

So what do her parents think about their daughter who dresses up in a sleeping bag and pretends to be a whale?

To answer everything, Bron and her parents have devised this show and there's 27 years of material to explore. 

Bring your olds.

Fringe Hints 1: Brand New

Fringe Hints 2: Shows for Nerds

Fringe Hints 4: But I'm Poor

Fringe Hints 5: Cartwheel to the Circus

Fringe Hints 6: Musicals

Fringe Hints 7: Well Made Plays

Fringe Hints 8: Puppets and Letters

Fringe Hints 9: Music and Film

Fringe Hints 10: Church or Laundromat

Review: Livin' The Dream

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2010

Livin' The Dream

5 October 2010

Meeting Room,  Fringe hub

to 9 October

www.melbournefringe.com.au

I had no idea that I had lived someone's dream. Back in 1988, little Kate McLennan would so have hated me because I went to Expo 88.

In Livin the Dream, Kate McLennan and Fiona Harris open their hearts and embarrassing pasts to explore what it means to live your dreams. With vision boards (you've watched Oprah and know what they are), family pics,  a blackboard and videos of their comedian friends, Kate and Fiona sit down to a cup of tea and talk about the dreams they achieved and their total fails.

Fiona directed Kate in the award-winning and bloody marvellous  The Debutante Diaries in 2006 and in last year's  Dead River. It's so wonderful to see this duo being themselves and I can't say enough good about them. Except that it's great to see them joined by director Roz Hammond. Roz is already one of the best comedy actors around and twists stand up and theatre into a structure that makes the show feel like a chat in the living room with your best friends, while being as therapeutic as a year in expensive therapy.

The stories we love the most aren't devised by overly-clever writers (who all secretly admire the Da Vinci Code for its plotting), but are the day-to-day things that really happened. Real stories are the ones that our hearts love, even if our brain tells us to love the clever plotting.

By listening to Fiona and Kate read their childhood literature (I would buy the picture book about the baby chook being flushed down the toilet), show pictures of their not-as-hot-as-they-are-now teen years and reveal some big relationship scars, everyone in the audience can re-live their own remarkably similar experiences.

I know I wasn't the only person inanely grinning with recognition. Being neither blonde nor hot, I too aspired to be the achievable Jan in Grease (and it solved my lack of dancing/singing skill), discovered at 15 that getting off your face was totally the best way to talk to boys, used the phrase "get on" (what one did when "talking" to boys), liked The Pirate Movie and have spent time following and staying with men who had made it clear that I wasn't the one.

But at least I didn't talk to trees and can remember the name of my first with-tongues kiss.

Dreams are what get us out of bed to face each day, so don't consider missing Livin' the Dream

And Kate, Expo was great, even if I didn't see any of the Young Talent Team and was busy trying to impress a boy who didn't fancy me. 

This review appears on AussieThearte.com (without my Expo 88 pass).

  

Dead River

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2009
Dead River
Pregnant Goldfish Productions
30 September 2009
The Store Room

It’s been three years since Kate McLennan’s The Debutante Diaries won Fringe awards, headed off to Edinburgh and left us holding our breath for more. In Dead River, McLennan teams up again with director Fiona Harris and fellow Debutante devotees will be thrilled.

Dead River is also set in rural Victoria, but it’s a more complex story told by six-year-old Janie (the delightful Emma Leonard), who is joined by her family and Dead River residents, played by McLennan, Brett Swain and Helen McFarlane. Janie and her sister Rachel love their adventurous life in Dead River and can’t see the poverty and gambling that are causing problems at home and with the neighbours, even when they find the murdered body of an RSPCA inspector in their forest.

A more complex story than Debutante, Dead River deftly juxtaposes childhood innocence with the jaded acceptance and anger of the adult world. There are a few moments of confusion and some obvious plotting choices, but they will smooth out as audiences react and the script develops.

Ultimately, McLennan creates characters who are hard to forget and refuse to let anyone not love them. Even when we’re wiping away tears of laughter, we see the truth in the worst of them, recognise a bit of ourselves and understand them far better than they understand themselves.

If you’ve had enough Fringe cynicism, blackness and nude fire twirling, the hope and warmth of Dead River will set you back on track. (And see it with Donna and Damo to multiply the feelgoodness of the evening.)

More 2009 Fringe reviews.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

The Debutante Diaries

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2006
The Debutante Diaries
Kate McLennan
7 October 2006
The Festival Hub, The Raglan

Review by Christina Cass

Kate McLennan (The Wrong Night and Let Loose Live) had me absolutely howling with laughter during her new show, The Debutante Diaries, now playing at The Raglan in the Fringe Festival Hub until 3 October.

Directed by Fiona Harris (SkitHOUSE and Flipside) and written and performed by McLennan herself, I laughed; I cried (really, I really cried) but was mostly astounded by McLennan’s seamless work depicting the trials and tribulations of preparing for that classic teenage right of passage – The Debutante Ball.

McLennan morphs between eight different characters and with aid of only a prop or two. She completely embodies the bitchy “mean girl”, the perpetually perky socialite, her jock boyfriend and the lecherous perv teacher/organizer of the Ball. They’re great fun to laugh at and make fun of, because we all know these people – we dealt with them in high school and we’re probably still dealing with them today. That’s one of the reasons her writing is so successful – it smacks of truth – and when we witness her most poignant character, Sophie, negotiating the confusing maze of preparation to her “fairytale night” it can break our heart.

Harris’ direction is for the most part spot-on. Less is more in a one-woman show and although McLennan is a master at transformation, she would be greatly aided by better technical transitions. Perhaps by watching a recording one of Lily Tomlin’s classic one-woman shows, one can see how sound and light can truly act as a buffer between characters and help the actor propel the story forward rather than continually stop-starting.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com

The Wrong Night

The Wrong Night
The Six
23 October 2006
The Spiegeltent

Review by Christina Cass

The Wrong Night presented by the roving comedy troupe, The Six, should have been passing out Pampers with the price of admission – for all the hilarious pant-wetting that ensued.

The Six have been playing around Melbourne for some time now, honing and toning their irreverent comedy, but for this packed one-night only show (sadly) at The Famous Spiegeltent, they roped in several guest comedians to polish off the evening with a more professional shine.

MC/Diva and Green Room Award nominee, Wes Snelling, was the stumbling, gin-swizzling Tina del Twiste. She kept the night rolling effortlessly with her velvet-dipped dagger wit and dress and book ended the show with two songs including a fabulous rendition of “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.”

Also performing were the highly entertaining Die Roten Punkte – a tongue-in-cheek brother/sister punk band from Germany; a sublime Geraldine Quinn who should never, ever be allowed to handle sharp objects while drinking and singing “Bitch with a Bone”; Wilson Dixon’s clever cowboy philosopher strumming “A Man with No Name,” and the cheeky Caravan of Love ladies.

The Six (Josh Cameron, Jon Peck, Mandy Mannion and Kate McLennan with guests Cara Mitchell and Bridget Bantick) scattered their sketch comedy between the guest acts and not always so successfully – Chastity Jane was sooooo wrong – but heck, that’s what the show was all about, The Wrong Night. Thankfully the overall wrongness was oh-so-right with the tone of the night; but next time, dear Six, book a longer run so Melbourne doesn’t blink and miss a delightfully mischievous evening.