Category: Reviews

Lana Schwarcz : Love Monster

By Colin Flaherty

Reading excerpts from her Big Book of Exes, Lana Schwarcz tells a number of disastrous stories from her love life. She is anxious about still being single at 40 and wonders what the main problem is. Could it be the Love Monster?

Each former lover was referred to by occupation only which gave anonymity and also provided fuel for some witty lines about why their relationship ended. Some non-starter beaus were covered in two extended tales; one about a Vietnamese trip, the other about signing up for a reality show. This allowed her to explore some amusing peripheral material that didn’t focus solely on her love life and give more variety to the script.

This was a very theatrical show – essentially a humorous monologue that stuck firmly to a script. Lighting fade outs to divide the “chapters” rounded the formal staging. She delivered her tales with a hint of nervous energy that fitted well with the theme of being a little needy for affection. The audience couldn’t help but warm to her, even after she gave us a sickeningly cutesy collective name.

It wasn’t just an hour of Lana bemoaning her lack of a partner, there was something special thrown into the mix. A renowned puppeteer, Schwarcz has created a stunning creature in the titular monster who made a number of appearances throughout. A physical manifestation of her relationship issues, the Monster distributes love blindly much to Lana’s annoyance. The scene with the monster using Lana’s phone and her woeful attempts at poetry were great fun to watch as she created anarchy. It was a wonderful respite from the theatrical stiffness with some audience interaction which was gentle but liable to intrude on your personal space.

With its poignant ending, Love Monster is a show that unabashedly tugs at your heartstrings. With such a warm and engaging performer it is certainly a fun way to wallow in loneliness.

Love Monster is on at the Imperial Hotel until April 19
http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/love-monster-lana-schwarcz

Xavier Toby : ‘Mining’ My Own Business

By Noel Kelso

Last year comedian Xavier Toby managed to get himself into quite a bit of debt. So much so that he decided to leave behind his career as a stand-up comic to take a position working for a mine where he could earn a lot of money in a very short space of time and get his finances out of the red.

His show – Mining My Own Business – is the resulting story and does for the mining industry what Kitchen Confidential did for the image of working in the restaurant industry, and the results are not necessarily flattering.

Arriving on stage in a truly hideous Hawaiian shirt, Toby begins his tale by telling the audience the reasons for his decision – the moment he realised just how much debt he was in, the uncomfortable discussion with his uncle when he tried to get a job and the tiny plane containing massive blokes which greeted him on his first day.

Despite his degree in Engineering, Toby is given a position working in admin and this immediately picks him out as an outsider amongst the other, supposedly more manly, mine workers. The Hawaiian shirt is explained within the first few minutes and leads into a running gag about Xavier’s nickname on site. No – that’s not complimentary either.

There follows fifty enlightening minutes of funny, shocking and brutally honest tales of life on a mining site, aided with illustrative photos projected on a screen. Toby explains to the audience how swearing gets used as a form of punctuation by the miners and how they have to hastily modify this in deference to the supposedly more delicate sensibilities of the few ladies on the site when talking to them. He questions the effectiveness of the unwieldy and tedious system of health and safety which it was his job to help administer and how most guys on the site had found ways to ignore or dismiss. His description of the long and involved process for testing a manhole cover is gripping and ultimately baffling.

The audience were kept laughing for a full 50 minutes as Toby related his tales of life on a mining site with the practised delivery and confidence of an experienced performer, even dealing with a particularly rude member of the audience who had decided to make a phone call halfway through.

This is a witty, insightful and intelligent show offering a window into the inner workings of an industry which is usually kept behind closed doors.

‘Mining’ My Own Business is on at the Portland Hotel – Portland Room until April 20
http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/mining-my-own-business-xavier-toby

I love Green Guide Letters with Steele Saunders

By Lisa Clark

Let’s start with The Green Guide. It’s a weekly newspaper magazine about television, radio and technology and astronomy (for some inexplicable but delightful reason) but mostly about television in Melbourne’s The Age newspaper. The Letters to The Green Guide are from the public about television and radio, but mostly about television and mostly about ABC public television. I Love Green Guide Letters is a weekly podcast by Melbourne comedian Steele Saunders about the Green Guide Letters, which he loves, despite not watching many of the actual television shows that the letters are about. Steele usually has two comedian or celebrity guests on to discuss the letters with him and everyone has a lot of fun. The podcast has become very popular, even outside of Melbourne where they have no access to the Green Guide and this has a lot to do with the work Steele has put in to make it so much fun to listen to.

Steele has built a culture around the podcast of running gags about the Green Guide Letters and he has rules that his guests and listeners must obey; 1. Listeners will not send letters into the Green Guide just to have them read out on the podcast. 2. Steele will read the letters out in a high pitched, silly voice and 3. There is no talking allowed by guests during the reading of the letters. It helps add structure to what might otherwise be an excuse for comedians to get together and have a laugh and makes it feel like a special club.

This is the fourth time I’ve been to a live recording of I Love Green Guide Letters and they are always great fun, probably because everyone loves talking about television. The comedians not only have their own favourite shows to talk about but many have been on TV with their own fascinating behind the scenes experiences to share. They come on the podcast knowing that Steele is going to find some letters to read out about them or the shows they have been on. This can occasionally make for uncomfortable listening from some of the guests but he generally tries to find something nice as well as the usual negative letter. The guests for the first recorded episode of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival were Tom Gleeson, Pete Hellier and Dave Thornton and they worked well together.

If you are a fan of Steele’s podcast, then being in the audience at least once is a must, if only for the visual gags, like Pete’s framed gift for Steele apologising for his character being accidentally cut from the credit list at the end of the episode of It’s a Date that he was in and Pete and Tom’s stage whispering to each other in a huddle about Steele & Dave going on too much about the fun time they had together at the Meredith Music Festival. If you’ve never heard the podcast before this is a great chance to join in the fun and find out what it’s all about.

I love Green Guide Letters is on at the Swanston Hotel (note the venue change!) until April 19
http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/i-love-green-guide-letters-with-steele-saunders

Listen to I Love Green Guide Letters on iTunes or the website http://ilovegreenguideletters.com/

Aardvark Mark: After Dark

By Colin Flaherty

Jono Cowan, Oliver Morris & Tom Bainbridge. Three young guys who have joined forces to present a sketch show with a twist; sketches without borders. This blurring of the boundaries between one scene and the next was interesting and saved us from staring at an empty stage, but didn’t really serve the show in a comedic sense.

The vast majority of the sketches lacked a punchline. Before anyone brings up the “Monty Python didn’t do punchlines” argument, I will counter with the fact that these guys certainly don’t have the writing chops to get away with that kind of subversion. Any laughs came from them dicking about and mugging rather than any clearly structured jokes. Their modus operandi was to drive variations of an idea into the ground but this often had diminishing returns when the sketches overstayed their welcome.

In the handful of sketches that did have clear punchlines, they followed with some waffling banter, usually as a means of linking to the next sketch. This led to quiet spots where the belly laughs would have normally been; good if you’re a performer concerned with setting up the next scene but bad if you’re an audience member familiar with the standard structure of a sketch show and wants to get into a rhythm of mirth.

Their material included a fair bit of pop culture and to fully appreciate most of it required that you watched the same TV shows as they did. Their over the top caricatures covered for some of this shortfall but if you weren’t familiar with the show they were referencing, you were often lost.

A highlight was a big dance sequence that was both joyful and utterly silly. It would have been the perfect conclusion to the show but they followed it with a musical number that did nothing more than show off their musical talents and get a sing-along happening.

Some banter between the three critiquing their own performances, scripting and roles in the show were the some of the more interesting parts of the show. The scenes justifying the shows’ title were a clever idea but, despite a fun journey over the course of the show, lacked a strong payoff.

All three sold the shit out of the material with enthusiastic performances and lots of colour and movement. It’s a shame that the script didn’t live up to their sizzle.

After Dark is on at The Last Jar until April 4
http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/aardvark-mark-after-dark

Jeff Green : All Guns Blazing!

By Sofia Monkiewicz

International comedians telling stories about their experiences with Melbourne can sometimes get a little tedious (cue jokes about the weather, the public transport system, Australian drivers and our roads, and Frankston and basically any outer suburb). Jeff Green mentions all of these classics in his new show All Guns Blazing but he manages to keep his insights fresh, entertaining, and not tiresome in the slightest.

Green became an Australian permanent resident several years ago and his Melbourne International Comedy Festival show focuses mainly on his adjustment to living in Melbourne with his wife and two children. While he does briefly poke fun at Frankston and complain rigorously about our famous bipolar weather, he also entertains with original tales of his experiences with Australian public toilets and with one of our greatest national treasures: Bunnings. It may be his classy suit and tie get-up, his English accent or perhaps just his personable nature, but Green is consistently and unwaveringly charming. From the detailed re-enactment of a performance he once did where a firework was lit while clenched tightly in his backside to a side-splitting description of his talented ability to perform poorly in the bedroom, even at his very crudest he still remains a gentleman.

It is easy to see that Green is a stand-up comedy veteran. He is incredibly comfortable on stage and does not hide behind his microphone. He speaks with his audience as though he is conversing with friends, telling us of his adventures and venting about his life. All Guns Blazing is essentially a series of humorous rants blended with charismatic sarcasm plus a hint of grumpy-old-man. Green’s commentary on things like yoga, food intolerance and automatic doors are akin to that of every 50-year-old man who has kids and a yearning nostalgia for the good old days. He definitely appealed mostly to the older members of the audience but was also enjoyed by the younger crowd, possibly because he reminded them of their dads (this was certainly the case for me!). He also performs a rap about his cat which was funny largely because of its lame-factor and because, well, it was about his cat.

Throughout the show there were several opportune moments for Green to converse with and react to the crowd a little but he stuck strictly to his prepared material. His hour-long monologue is excellent, however it would have been even better if he had acknowledged the few times where audience members did something somewhat amusing.

Jeff Green encompasses all factors necessary to create a successful Festival show, including but not limited to: a strong stage presence, many amusing insights about the world we live in, and consistent, well-timed punchlines. He has been part of the comedy scene for a long time, and this is made very clear by his seamless performance. Charming, sarcastic and clever, All Guns Blazing is a ticket to guaranteed laughter.

All Guns Blazing! is at Melb Town Hall & Forum Theatre until April 14

http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/all-guns-blazing-jeff-green

Max & Ivan : The Reunion

By Alanta Colley

Max and Ivan are the class of 2004, thrust mercilessly into the same room again after ten years of regrets, grudges and lost memories at their reunion. This critically acclaimed pair from the UK wowed audiences at last year’s MICF, walking away with a Barry nomination as well as a Foster’s Edinburgh Comedy Award nomination in 2013.

The audience furiously held on for dear life as we simultaneously encountered the class of 2004 in 2004 and 2014. The story spirals ever closer to the precarious edge of chaos as multiple characters become ever more entangled, undergo flash backs, confrontations, doubts, glories, and seek retribution. A cast of at least twenty exquisite characters are played by Max and Ivan, leaping erratically from one character to the next and back again. The encounters become ever more crazy and hilarious ’til two characters played by the same man enact a marriage proposal.

We meet the archetypes present in every school year; Brian – who is essentially allergic to life. We meet Jessica, his long-held and never confessed love. We meet the bully, the geography teacher, the canteen lady, and Jonathan Jones; the student who no one remembers, despite having leapt from the science block. Twice.

The duo combine the best of sketch, slapstick, songs and story telling at high speed and high volume. The writing is brilliant, packed full of twists, turns, and escaped zoo animals. The performance bounced off the back of the theatre. While sweat poured forth from the performers they never displayed the exhaustion they must have been feeling. It was exhausting just watching them. Some fantastically executed audience participation was also a highlight of the night.

Fun, furiously paced and fundamentally silly, there’s few who wouldn’t love this performance. Already playing to packed rooms so get a ticket before there’s none left.

The Reunion is on at the Melb Town Hall – Powder Room until April 20
http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/the-reunion-max-ivan