Category: Reviews

Oliver Clark’s Comeback Special

By Alanta Colley

Sporting an electric blue velvet 2 piece suit, a debonair smile, matching cufflinks and more than one copy of his recently released album ‘Warming up the pipes’ Clark delivers us a dash of piping hot Las Vegas smarm. Er, charm.

Clark’s act evokes the laughter of awkwardness as he pauses after each gag to reflect on his humour with a chuckle to himself. The man’s face is a theme park of expressions; he could sign for his own show just using his eyebrows. Clark will show you how to double take a double take. More than once.

Clark pushes stereotypes of the great crooners such as Tom Jones and Elvis to new and uncomfortable levels; burying us in another era, as he sets the mood of each song with his disco ball and cheeky one liners. You’ll be inculcated in a world of cocktail parties, holidays to Acapulco, long lost romances and sweet love ballads. Perhaps more than a little self-assured of just how much charisma he is packing Clark tiptoes the line indelicately between charming and downright creepy. The result evokes no few squawks of laughter from the audience.

In this show Clark also employs a baguette in a manner you’ve not seen before, and in all likeliness will not will see again. Clark’s sweet-talking a sandwich routine was disturbingly erotic. Or erotically disturbing.

Clark’s rather exquisite guitar chops emerge half way through the performance. When he really lets loose in song it is a truly pleasurable experience, I forgot to feel uncomfortable for a good five minutes or so.

This isn’t a show for the shy audience member; you may very well receive a full frontal assault of Clark’s particular brand of charm. Things can get uncomfortably intimate. The doors may be locked during the performance. You’ve been warned. Characterful comedy with class and charisma on the rocks.

Oliver Clark’s Comeback Special is on at Portland Hotel – Locker Room until April 19
http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/comeback-special-oliver-clark

Sara Pascoe vs The Truth

By Lisa Clark

 

Sara Pascoe is strange. It took a while for me to warm to her, especially after she opens with a convict joke but it’s a set up for later on when she admits ‘I like to say something at the beginning that means I have to win the audience back’. It worked and she proved to be an intelligent, fascinating and slightly unhinged performer who was fun to spend an hour with.

There are lots of weird aspects to Sara Pascoe vs The Truth, I always worry about comedians when they brag about drinking too much, she also goes through some irrational fears, and worrying paranoia. I enjoyed a rant against hairdressers that led to her having to cut her own hair and her horror gig story garnered a lot of sympathy from the audience.

The topics Sara covers are a bit all over the place but the audience can’t miss the major theme for this show. It’s written on the Tshirt Sara had especially printed and is wearing; “There are no facts, only interpretations.” – Friedrich Nietzsche. She repeats this throughout the show and it often makes a good punchline. There are actually a lot of surprisingly intellectual moments throughout the show. She also becomes gradually more political, but never hits you over the head with her ideas.

Sara Pascoe is clearly very experienced at stand up from the UK and keeps the audience laughing throughout. She is more of a joke teller than a story teller in that the stories feel like they are there for the jokes rather than because she wants to share a tale with us and there is no overarching tale as such. That’s not to say that there isn’t some form of structure, with her repeated quote reminding audiences to ask where the truth lay in her words.

It’s hard to know if the drunken, rude, paranoid side of Sara is a character she puts on for the audience or not. That’s a more acceptable type of comedian than a brilliant, erudite, feminist, philosopher, perhaps. Sara Pascoe vs The Truth is definitely a show I would recommend to audiences with open minds who enjoy something a bit skewed. Certainly one to take your friends to who like something smart and different.

 

http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/vs-the-truth-sara-pascoe

The First Five

By Noel Kelso

Have you ever watched a stand-up comedian perform and thought to yourself afterwards, ‘I could do better than that’?

Well now is your chance to give it a try. The First Five is a comedy workshop for those wanting to learn the art of the stand-up. Hosted by Melbourne comedian Lauren Bok this is an hour during which participants are shown mike technique, the building blocks of a joke, how to turn a mundane situation into something absurd and how to think like a comedian.

Oh – and if you attend you must perform.

To begin each member of the group is asked to stand and tell the others their name, what they ate for breakfast, something which they dislike and something which they like. Then they have to repeat that on stage from behind a microphone. This exercise is a great ice-breaker and helps to get everyone relaxed with one another and comfortable with the stage.

We are then given advice on stage presence, delivery and how to relax. One of the key factors mentioned is economy of speech; particularly relevant to myself as I can ramble on a bit as may be obvious from my reviews.

Next is the joke development section where we were asked to select pieces of paper from four buckets containing different topics, feelings, questions or phrases with blank spaces to be filled. These formed the seeds of our acts and we wrote ideas down, discussing them in small groups before performing.

I should point-out at this stage that my wife had accompanied me under the impression that she would simply be observing. So to discover that she too was expected to perform was a bit of a surprise.

But we both performed and managed to get some laughs from those in the room. This is where the great potential for this workshop lies – in encouraging not only those who wish to enter stand-up, but those whose professions might involve presentations at meetings or conferences. This is the sort of workshop which encourages participants to develop ideas outside of the normal parameters and would be invaluable to someone in a dry profession who has to attend conferences and speak.

Lauren Bok makes a fine mentor and is always on hand to offer advice throughout. The workshop itself works best with small numbers as the time is limited and there is a lot to get through, but I highly recommend it to anyone wishing to hone their stand-up skills

The First Five is on at the Imperial Hotel until April 12
http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/the-first-five

Cal Wilson : It Could Have Been Me

By Alanta Colley

Cal Wilson, the likable Kiwi who has appeared on QI and all about invites us this comedy festival to meet the people she could have been.

What if she’d never left Auckland? What if she’d been a man? What if she had married one of the boyfriends of her twenties? What if she’d never married? The figments of Cal’s imagination spiral into ever more erratic and fanciful creations with ever more twisted destinies before our eyes.

Cal ponders what would have happened if the fear of the unknown had prevented her from moving to Australia and had taken over her life. Still performing at children’s parties in her 40’s, Fairy Robot Sparkle clamps down on fun; warning children of the imminent danger lurking in common household items and at every turn. She makes them know that death is always watching. We meet a posturing self-congratulatory sleaze bag who sought fame writing erotic science fiction novels; Calibran – Cal’s persona had she turned out to be a man. We meet the Cal who married one of her boyfriends in her 20’s; this time at his funeral; Cal toting the accent of a woman who had been forced to change to meet her husband’s expectations. We meet Adele – a feminist poet who seems unsatisfied with life. As the characters develop and expand things start to get out of control.

This show is packed to the hilt full of props, performance, puns and punch. Cal’s characters are rich and ridiculous and a lot of fun. The plot is wild and dynamic. We watch as various parts of Cal’s past, future and present both real and imaginary come colliding together in a cacophony of absurdity.

The show is a thorough delight. Quirky, well-executed and funny. Cal displays the well-honed acting skills that failed to get her into any of the many acting schools that she auditioned for. Their loss was our gain. A rollercoaster of ridiculousness; get along if you can.

It Could Have Been Me is on at Melb Town Hall – Powder Room until April 20
http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/it-could-have-been-me-cal-wilson

Class Clowns 2014

By Noel Kelso

Everybody remembers the class clown in their year at school. The one person who was always messing about and making people laugh.

Now in its 19th year, the Melbourne International Comedy Festival’s own Class Clowns education programme takes those kids from the back of the class, gives them some workshops with professional comedians such as Kate McLennan, Danny McGinley (himself a former winner) and Aunty Donna, and places them front and centre on stage before a packed audience at the Capitol theatre in Melbourne.

The afternoon commences with our hosts Ronny Cheung and Luke McGregor – the unlikeliest double-act in comedy – arriving on stage and warming-up the audience with their very different performance styles. This got the audience laughing and opened them up for the young acts to follow.

Thirteen acts from all across Australia stepped on stage to entertain and delight those in the room. The audience laughed along to gags about school trips, teacher’s foibles, solutions to Melboune’s traffic problems and teenage surliness. It was two hours of joy from start to finish.

As the judges deliberated their decision the room was kept laughing by special guests Demi Lardner, RAW comedy winner 2013, and British sketch duo Max and Ivan. Their bizarre take on a botched bank robbery was effortlessly funny and their air guitar contest, which recruited an audience member to help out, was inspired lunacy which had the room roaring with laughter.

It was then time for the big moment and McGregor and Cheung led all of the young performers back onto the stage as they announced the winner and three runners-up as decided by the judging panel which included comedians Sara Pascoe, Dave Callan, Sammy J and Melbourne International Comedy Festival Director, Susan Provan.

The three runners-up were Mabita Makwaza from Sacred Heart College in South Australia whose material was both funny and socially aware; Jack Keenan from St Leonards College in Victoria whose routine was energetic and surprisingly mature for someone of fourteen, and Grace Bruxner from Darwin High School in Northern Territory, whose lampooning of the stereotypical surly Goth teen was sharply observed and laugh-out-loud funny.

The winner of the competition was 14 year old Gregor Tarrant from Wodonga Middle Years’ College in Victoria, whose elastic-limbed routine combined physical comedy and great gags to fine effect and had the audience rolling about with laughter.

Hopefully we will see more of these young comics in the future and they will continue their comedic endeavours further.

Heats will begin for 2015 later in the year.

Kate McLennan : The Duck’s Nuts

By Alanta Colley

McLennan quickly disarms her audience with a big, bright smile and a charming persona. McLennan feels like a friend within minutes of the show getting underway.

Kate initiated discussion by obeying the mandatory ruling that a female comedian must state her age, marital status and whether or not she has kids before the audience, like some sort of societal trial by jury. But luckily she carried the conversation into far more interesting directions and critically analysed the structures which dictate this social obsession. McLennan talks of the women who perpetuate the idea that success and fulfilment is solely governed by these attributes. She talks about her personal relationship with these pressures; on one hand rejecting them, another questioning them, and the struggle not to internalise other people’s expectations.

McLennan is a competent story teller. She builds a robust picture for us of her mother and father, both endearingly mad in their own way, and the experience of growing up in Mortlake in regional Victoria. McLennan speaks to a rugged Australian upbringing dressed in overalls, bikie adventures, secret clubs and trips to the tip. She speaks of failed family holidays and turning out okay despite the laissez fare approach her parents took to parenting, which was more the norm of the 80’s. McLennan’s masterful telling makes many of the themes of her stories of her family’s interactions recognisable to the audience, particularly the slightly dysfunctional way families deal with the harsher realities of illness or misfortune.

McLennan is confident enough to play with the audience a little bit, leading us down one narrative before revealing she’d made it up then taking us off somewhere else. She builds our trust enough that we can forgive her for letting us invest in a fictional account.

The mischievous and warm McLennan is more together than she lets on. This was a truly pleasurable hour with a surprise or two in store at the end.

The Duck’s Nuts is on at Melb Town Hall – Lunch Room until April 20
http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/the-duck-s-nuts-kate-mclennan