Review: Ardal O'Hanlon

MICF 2011

Ardal O'Hanlon

Adrian Bohm presents

21 April 2011

CapitalTheatre

to 24 April

www.comedyfestival.com.au

Ardal O'Hanlon is a lovely chap. So lovely that even saying fuck can't make him any less loveable.

Best known as a cat in an episode of Dr Who and as Father Dougal in the bloody wonderful Father Ted (let's forget My Hero), Ardal is so damn nice that it's impossible not to love him. I hope he wasn't trying to be hard and edgy...

Years on the standup circuit have let Ardal shape his opening like it was written for Melbourne and Australia: the place with stuff no one else has, like the platypus and jobs. He weaves in stories about how grim it is in the northern hemisphere with the economic crisis, throws in the compulsory Irish-Catholic Pope jokes and plays with heard-it-before material, like tight sheets on hotel beds, his wife looking less than sexy in a floral maternity dress and the horror of charity Christmas gift.

Sure it's safe and standard stand up stuff, but he tells it with such freshness and charm that even the baby poo story is laugh-out-loud delightful.

I love Ardal on the telly and love him a little bit more in the flesh. He's not breaking any new ground, but shows less-experienced comedians how to charm a huge room by telling some damn fine jokes.  And he confirms my theory that willy is the funniest word in the English language.

This review appears on AussieTheatre.com

Review: Fran I Am

MICF 2011
Fran I Am
Eva Johansen
10 April 2011
Imperial Hotel
to 24 April
www.comedyfestival.com.au

How can you be a beatnik when your dad's an accountant who loves your mum and spends quality time with you? What a bastard! Poor Fran couldn't be a miserable artist because there was too much love in her comfortable middle class life.

Jazz cat, interpretative mimer and poet Fran is one of the most original characters to emerge from this year's comedy festival. With silent androgynous musician Grüg at her side, she grooves, scats and rhymes her way through her struggle to find enough stuff to hate.

Eva Johansen is best known for her work with gorgeous kabaret toupe The Caravan of Love and as the sultry host of Kunst Ist Scheisse.  Fran would be scared of Madame Eva (and probably write a poem about the dark depths of her cleavage), but she lets Eva combine her room-silencing singing voice (even when she has a cold) with the kind of comic writing and physical performance not usually associated with divas.

Fran's love of all black, berets and glasses ensures that she's nearly at one with our own inner-city hipster set, but her soul is still back in Minnesota in 1961 – a time of tiny waists and pointy boobs – where she fell asleep in Alan Ginsberg's beard and woke up in 2011 Melbourne.

The future isn't what she expected. There are no silver jumpsuits and structuralists like Foucault are now called post modernists. It's a bit too much for any boho poet to understand – and even Yoko Ono refused to help out when Fran spied her ordering sushi in Yoyogi.

With a script overflowing with ejaculating malapropisms, poet-name puns and interactive po mo discussions, the humour is at the far end of the fart-joke to witticism scale, but it's never enough to intimidate.  And, as most Melbourne theatre goers spent years doing their arts degrees, it's nice to see someone acknowledging our dinner party knowledge of American 60s poets, post-structuralist philosophers and Shakespeare.

As a first run show, we know that Fran's story will develop and change. The story could do with a touch more shaping and a stronger conclusion, but with rhymes as wonderfully atrocious as a wearing black and Kerouac, images of garden flamingos and ginger poufs, and Shakespeare in interpretive dance and mime (if only the MTC's Dick 3 was that good..), there's nothing stopping Fran from becoming a festival favourite.

But, local shows sometimes have trouble finding their deserved festival audiences. Sure it's great to see TV favourites in the flesh, but it's so worth taking a risk on a local show. The tickets are cheaper, the venues more intimate and one day you'll be able to brag that you saw them when they were still performing in small rooms.

Sp please pop on your beret and let Fran release your inner bohemian. And, for the perfect poetry double, start your evening with Poet Laureate Telia Nevile in For Whom The Bell Tolls.

This review appears on AussieTheatre.com

Review: Sammy J & Randy in Bin Night

MICF 2011
Sammy J & Randy in Bin Night
Laughing Stock Productions
2 April 2011
Victoria Hotel
to 24 April and now at the Hi Fi Bar
www.comedyfestival.com.au

As Sammy J and Randy's Bin Night has moved to a bigger venue and added extra shows, they don't need another review raving about their unmissability. Sorry...

If you don't do and see Melbourne's greatest heterosexual puppet-man couple every chance you get, you're mad.  With an effortless rapport that makes Fred and Ginger's dancing look awkward, they are consistently fucking hilarious ... and smart and forever fingering the zeitgeist.

This year, they are still sharing a house in Rickett's Lane, but all is not right. Someone is putting rubbish in THEIR bin, so it's time for an all-night stake out and time to dig through the household scraps to uncover some secrets. But that's just story. This show's for anyone who remembers Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, loves pinstripe PJs and has wanted to kiss in front of Pharlap's corpse.

I'd love every comedy festival goer to take a risk and see an unknown show, but if you want to balance that risk with some guaranteed brilliance, see if there are any tickets left for Sammy J and Randy (the purple dude on the end of Heath McIvor's arm).

This review appears on AussieTheatre.com

Review: A Modern Deception

MICF 2011

A Modern Deception

1 April 2011

The Bull and Bear Tavern

to 23 April

www.comedyfestival.com.au

If there's a prize for conquering the worst venue of the Comedy Festival, Vyom, Alex and Luke from A Modern Deception have to win it.

I don't care if it's sleight of hand, illusion or magic, I love a good trick. The deception men are as debonair as their geeky souls allow and they infuse an old-school trick show with enough originality to make it seem brand new. A Modern Deception is a comic cabaret with class, wit and nerdiness that's worthy of a far better venue.

It's not The Bull.... Tavern's fault that the sight lines are so dud that it was a struggle to see many of the tricks, but the ambient noise from the kitchen and staff was so distracting (ie: fucking loud) that I spent too long worrying about the orders at table 17 and whether the Trevally ever made it out of the kitchen. The only people who didn't seem to want to make the noise disappear were the men on the stage and they drew even the most annoyed audience member back to the show.

A Modern Deception is well on it's way to being awesome. I'd love to see the onstage characters developed further (don't worry about being loveable; be odd and extreme and you'll still be adored). Stay your gorgeous selves for corporate gigs, but for this type of cabaret, you'll go to a new level with even more story and conflict among the characters.

Apparently the ending is brilliant, but – due to a late start – I had to run or miss my next show.  If it was going the way I think it was, I'm sure I missed something spectacular. 

And to the owners and management of The Bull and Bear Tavern:

How wonderful it must be to have over hundreds of people who have never been into your venue, flock in during the laugh fest, willingly give you money in exchange for alcohol and be so impressed that they come back with tables full of their friends to try your food and soak in The Bear ....ing in the Woods ambiance.

How likely are they to come back when your kitchen starts sizzling food about 30 seconds into the show because "they're hungry now", and the sizzle continues with plate clanking, order yelling, phone answering ("There's the comedy on") and general staff discussion using their outside voices?

I'm guessing... none. 

It would be nice if you respected the artists, but even nicer if you respected the paying punters – and not just the dude who wanted Trevally.


This review appears on AussieThearte.com

Review: Dash and D'Bree Take It...

MICF 2011
Dash and D'Bree Take It...
1 April 2011
Portland Hotel
to 10 April
www.comedyfestival.com.au

As a middle-aged spunk rat who likes to browse the Laura Ashley sales rack at my leisure, Dash and D'Bree are everything I despise about shopping and gen Y;  no wonder I adore them.

I first wandered into a mall where they worked in 2009. They've since been fired from every off-the-rack fash boot in the suburb, but the Dotti Girl Clearance Outlet has two vacancies and the girls might have matured enough to last a whole day.

Katrina Mroz and Hayley Butcher created their grotesquely gorgeous duo after meeting at St Martins Youth Arts Centre. Self-involved, ridiculously dressed and dreaming about their totes orig song for Australia's Got Talent, their diet of Aero bars and UDLs keeps them in shape for any karaoke bar, and work would be perfs if the customers wouldn't bother them.

Satire that doesn't totes come from understanding is a waste of time. Like the only really funny Adelaide jokes are from people who live(d) in Adelaide, the only peeps who can satirise gen Y with enough love to make it rib-aching funny are those who don't believe that anyone could live without an iPhone and think it's cool (people still say cool, right?) to live with your parents in your 20s.

And it's the twenty-somethings who can't get enough of Dash and D'Bree. They recognise themselves and are laughing with them.  Oldies may still be laughing at, but we can see Rod Quantock (over 40s) or Eddie Perfect (over 30s) for our generational in-jokes.

With Wes Snelling at the directorial reins, Take It... is more sketch than story, but this is perfect for an early-evening Comedy Festival show in the bar of a hotel. And there are divine new atrocious song and dance numbers (go just to find out what UDL stands for) and new characters. When they make their tv show (I still think they're heading towards Kath and Kim status), there will be room for story and for the hint of vulnerability and that is going to take them into everyone's hearts.

And if you see me pulling my sequined hot pants out of my camel toe, well you'd better go to Dash and D'Bree's show and blame them in person.

This review appears on AussieTheate.com

Review: Misanthropology

MICF 2011

Eddie Perfect in Misanthropology

A Token Event

1 April 2011

The Famous Spiegeltent at the Arts Centre

to 24 April 

www.comedyfestival.com.au

Misanthropology may be the wankiest show title around, but not to worry because everyone will recommend Eddie Perfect in the always-gorgeous Spiegeltent because musical cabaret doesn't get much slicker than this.

From Shane Warne The Musical to his unforgettable Mack in Threepenny Opera and his musican-next-door sweetness in TV's Offspring, Eddie never fails to impress – but in his solo show he's free to share his concern that our society seems to be stalling in its anthropological progress. 

There's our obsession with the intrinsic goodness of "primitives", the faux caring of eco-lodge visitors and the obscene fashion sense of cyclists.  All are easy targets because they are us; or our neighbours if we don't want to admit our own hypocrisies.  And this kind of work would be enough to leave most Comedy Festival audiences happy enough to buy another bottle of fizz. But why settle for audience love when you can push them further?

Boob jobs could be controversial and "Daddy's Tits" should become the hold music for every cosmetic surgery.  Parents paying for their daughters's fucked personal image is one thing, but it's a brave performer who tackles rape to get a giggle. A failed rape joke is one thing that will assure that I never waste my time seeing a comedian again. I will see Eddie again. His material about professional footballers attacking a child for not being an adult is the best I've seen this issue presented on the stage – and the best Kerrie-Ann ever.  

Director Craig Ilott (director and and co-creator of the divine Smoke and Mirrors) has ensured  Misanthropology is perfected to a level that surpasses most on the cabaret circuit. Working with someone as awesome as Eddie is a good start, but Ilott understands the need for story and connection and shapes a performance that is created to be shared with an audience, which is so different from a show created to be watched. I've only become aware of him this year and will try to make up for missing his earlier works by seeing anything he directs from now on.

In true self-reflection style, the last song of the night is dedicated to the theatre and another great director, our own Barrie Kosky.  (And it's an even braver performer who takes on Barrie... )  If you haven't seen a Bazza show, Eddie's "Too Fucking Long" song is so spot on that you might not need to see a Bazza show. It's everything that keeps people away from "serious" theatre and everything that the people who go hate "but say that they love it." If there isn't an Oz Co grant that can send Eddie around to sing it to every director and soon-to-be director, perhaps we can send a collection bucket around during the interval(s) of any show over 90 minutes.

Oh Eddie Perfect ... dammit, you are.

This review appears on AussieTheatre.com