Michael Shafar 50/50

By Lisa Clark

Michael Shafar was diagnosed with testicular cancer 2 years ago and of course as a comedian some of the terror was probably leavened by ‘I’ll get some great material from this!” and so he has, but the main thing that will live with you after seeing 50/50 is that Michael Shafar is a fabulous comedian.

This is not a heavy, heart wrenching comedy festival show at all, in fact it doesn’t feel like a very cancer heavy show. Michael deftly weaves the story of his cancer experience lightly through his show and only occasionally drops a bit of terrifying information and quickly moves on to more jokes almost before you’ve had time to register it. How many tumours?! Oh…

Up the top he jokes about all the little annoying things you have to put up with while going through cancer, like strangers asking personal questions and wanting to hug you. I also learned about the drug Ketamine which proved useful seeing the next comedian of my evening Rhys Nicholson.

Michael comes across as pretty cheerful for someone who’s been through hell and back. Even when he’s angry at things, like antivaxxers and smokers, he remains pretty chipper. He also talks about giving up his law degree to do comedy and other non cancer related things and the laughs keep rolling. I can see the influence of Wil Anderson’s style here and if you’re a fan of Wil’s you will, no doubt, enjoy Michael’s work.

He is still in his 20s but Michael seems more mature, he has been around the comedy scene for a while and is a confident, talented comedian. If you have been through cancer, or a loved one who’s had it, this could be a great catharsis for you, but go along anyway, it’s just a very good comedy festival show.
Also..
$2 from every ticket sold will be donated to Cabrini Hospital in Malvern where Michael underwent his treatment.

Michael Shafar performs 50/50 at the Victoria Hotel til Apr 21

https://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2019/shows/50-50

Aaron Chen : piss off (just kidding)

By Colin Flaherty

Aaron Chen has been getting a bit of buzz around the festival this year. So much so that he put on extra shows in a bigger room at the Greek Centre. It was a good thing – a sold out early show on a Saturday could bear witness to the awesomeness of Chen and have a great time.

Beefcake portraits of Chen graced the stage and bombastic music played as we entered. The sheen of this impressive display wore off upon discovering the identity of the artist responsible for the art and when he began this rather low energy performance.

The show had the overall theme of success, fame and problems that come with it ,although his random selection of observational jokes didn’t seem to fit. The highlight was his serialised story “Crazy Rich Aaron” which hilariously chronicled the rise, fall and rise again of a billionaire called Aaron.

The delivery was a rambling affair that resembled a rookie open-micer so closely that it betrayed his years of experience. He went off on various asides and included plenty of slightly awkward audience banter. A number of jokes missed the bullseye but he regularly got big laughs while reflecting on their failure. He made humorous threats to us as if gaps in our knowledge were hampering, nay ruining, his show. I must say he is more than willing to go all in for a rather lame joke as demonstrated by a slightly uncomfortable visual gag.

On the surface this seemed like a potential car crash but clever lines emerged, his epic tale called back most of his previous jokes and he carried out his threats, proving that everything was carefully planned from the start. Even the crowd work was woven seamlessly into the overall narrative. Aaron certainly played us all.

Aaron Chen has a brilliant stage persona that is one of a kind. A strange mix of uber bravado and lovable loser, he is a beautiful contradiction. He presented a chatty hour of comedy with enough twists to reveal the comedic mastermind underneath the fragile shell.

piss off (just kidding) is on at the Melbourne Town Hall or The Greek Centre until April 21
https://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2019/shows/aaron-chen-piss-off-just-kidding

Aaron Gocs : Divorced… with Children

By Nick Bugeja

There’s a brown leather couch, and a table with a mug and a photograph displayed of Aaron Gocs and his two daughters. We’re in his lounge room, as Gocs laughingly splutters out a couple of times in the show.

Divorced 
 With Children is a 60-minute telling of Gocs’ life thus far. He was never the cool kid at school, instead taking refuge at the local skateparks on weekends. And he hasn’t always been lucky in love, either, in his early days finding it difficult to forge relationships with the opposite sex. Until, someone came along via a dating website. In his naivety, as Gocs describes it, he fell head over heels, realising too late his ex-wife’s impure motives for being with him. Since then, life has primarily consisted of learning, with many ups and lows, how to be a good dad to his two daughters.

From what I could tell, Gocs’ show is one of the most earnest, down-to-earth in the festival. A fair amount of comedic material is generally sourced from one’s personal experience, but it’s usually embellished, moulded and projected to create ridiculous or outlandish jokes. Gocs’ performance doesn’t seem so artificial, and a substantial portion of Divorced 
 With Children feels authentic; like you’re watching a man getting some difficult issues off his chest.

The show doesn’t necessary result in one uproarious laugh after the other, but it does often touch a nerve in the audience. At one point, Gocs mocks the idea that he – or any comedian, for that matter – is an artist, but isn’t art significantly about making people feel something? And can’t that sometimes be more important than some shallowly contrived joke for a bunch of laughs?

Divorced 
 With Children isn’t solely about Gocs’ life and divorce, taking sizeable detours into the origins of fast food drive throughs and the moral and implications of self-serve checkouts. It’s here where Gocs can escape from some of the more serious material and find humour in these ostensibly trivial and mundane facts of everyday life.

In Gocs’ show, Divorced 
 With Children, you get to see a real person tell their story, of what has proven trying in their life, and what makes it meaningful. Unless Gocs has fooled me entirely and made it all up – though I doubt he could fake such authenticity.

Divorced 
 With Children is son at the Victoria Hotel until 21 April.
https://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2019/shows/divorced-with-children

Josh Glanc : Glance You For Having Me

By Nick Bugeja

One word: wow. I had to watch a YouTube video of an interview to put to rest my suspicions that Glanc was an utter weirdo. It turns out he is actually capable of normal behaviour. In the interview I watched, you wouldn’t have batted an eyelid at his responses to his interviewer. They were modest, well-articulated, measured. Because, in his show, his conduct his quite out of this world; more bizarre and questionable, arguably, than Barry Humphrey’s famous turn as Dame Edna. Playing a version of himself, Glanc sings (which he isn’t half bad at), dances, and urinates – with a fake penis(es) – through the show, which focuses on his, let’s say, interesting relationship with his mother.

Glanc has been at this for a few years now, and his bizarro approach to comedy hasn’t dimmed. You have to give it to him – it definitely takes a lot of self-assurance to pull off something as audacious as what he does with Glance You For Having Me. His work isn’t going to be up everyone’s alley, but for those wanting to experience something beyond the standard stand-up routine, Glanc might just be what the doctor ordered.

Glanc doesn’t just thrive off funny, well-thought out lines, but also the wicked tension his awkward, unflinching brand of comedy elicits. Many of the laughs he gets are instantaneous; others land once the unsettling nature of the moment is fully appreciated.

The show starts off with a bang, followed thereafter by a steady flow of material, wrapped up by a truly disconcerting yet hilarious ending. I’m not entirely sure, even now, if what I saw was part of the show. If it wasn’t, then it shows Glanc’s kinetic ability for adaptation. If it was, then he’s done a great job of being so outrageous that everyone left stunned, and unsure, of what’d they’d just seen.

Glance You For Having Me is on at the Melbourne Town Hall until April 21
https://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2019/shows/glance-you-for-having-me

Dilruk Jayasinha Cheat Day(s)

By Lisa Clark 

The first thing I notice when Dilruk Jayasinha comes out on stage is OMG he looks Âœ the man he was when I saw last years MICF show! It’s pretty impressive. He made a bet with a mate, comedian Ben Lomas, to see who could get to under 100 kilos first and this show is about the journey Dil’s been on since.

If you’ve come hoping for diet tips, this is not the show. Dilruk does not break down how he changed his diet in any great detail or what he considers healthy eating to be. Dil is unpacking all the things that led to him being overweight and the emotional roadblocks along the way. His first port of call when losing weight was not a weightloss company, but therapy and the show feels a bit like an extension of getting all of that out, but in a way that comedians do, through comedy.

Dilruk brings his big eccentric family into the show, as he always does, here with memories of food, such as when Grandma would slip him treats with “Don’t tell your Mum” (with my Nana it was Scottish caramels slipped under my pillow, with Dil it was bowls of fried chicken fat). There was also childhood bullying to endure, and Dil learnt to turn it around, so they were laughing with, rather than at, him which is often the case with budding comedians.

As well as performing his show Dilruk deals with some audience disruption beautifully, stopping the show, finding out the names of all involved and making it part of the show. Thankfully it paid off beautifully and the crowd went wild. These things help make the audience feel like they came on a special night, and it was.

Dil is one of the comedians I’ve seen right through from nervous beginnings to that night when I see a comedian commanding a large room and think, “That’s it – They are There”. Dilruk is definitely one of the top standup comedians in the country right now and this is the best festival show I’ve seen him do.

To learn more about Dilruk’s journey you can listen to the podcast he made with his weightloss  buddy. Fitbet.

Or listen to Dilruk’s insightful interview with Wil Anderson on Wilosophy

Dilruk Jayasinha Cheat Day(s) is on at the Victoria Hotel til April 21 for more info check the MICF website:

https://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2019/shows/cheat-day-s

Alanta Colley & Ben McKenzie You Chose Poorly

By Lisa Clark 

You Chose Poorly is Alanta’s third science lecture-based comedy show at MICF, first it was bugs then it was bees and now it’s dinosaurs, sorry, Bias. This year she has teamed up with fellow science nerd, comedian Ben McKenzie, who would prefer to talk about dinosaurs, but he chose to perform in this show and it is about the choices we make and the bias inherent in our systems.

This show had a great opening with a reference to Raiders of the Lost Ark but it should have begun by preparing you for the interactive 2 min on-line Quiz. The audience could be doing it as they are waiting for the show to start or at least primed with the web address on the screen so everyone can have their phones on and the webside up ready in time for the quiz portion of the show which then helps shape large parts of the rest of the show. By the time we were getting close to being ready the 2 mins for the quiz was over. Our friends did not have phones with them. Also there was no free wifi at the venue which would’ve helped. I’ve done interactive things on phones before, it can be fun but it can also be very stressful. Esp if you have a slow old phone.

This brings us to the other stressful thing about this tech heavy show, I was sitting in the 3rd row and could barely see the screen because of the nature of the space – and a couple of tall people in front of me. The slides contained a lot of very funny things but we could not see them all and sometimes they were rushed. You might have to stand up occasionally to get a good look at the screen. It’s a pity to go on about this because the show otherwise was delightful, and Alana & Ben were heaps of fun to spend an hour with.

What do all geeks have in common? They have to tell you what they are passionate about, usually in great detail, but they don’t all have the communication and comedy skills of Alanta Colley & Ben McKenzie. Although they are not really straight standup types they have both been writing comedy and creating comedy shows for some time. I really enjoyed the dynamic between them, Ben was the naughty geek boy wanting to talk about dinosaurs, D&D and superheroes while Alanta kept the show on the rails, bringing it back to finding funny in the science and stats with an occasional political gag on the side. Although this is a show about psychology, science and statistics it is far from dry. Alanta and Ben make sure the laughs keep coming and have a charmingly funny finale.

This is having a short run so get on down to Campari House in Hardware Lane and get your geek on. You will have chosen wisely.

Alanta Colley & Ben McKenzie perform You Chose Poorly at Campari House til Apr 7

https://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2019/shows/you-chose-poorly