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Chloe Petts – How You See Me, How You Don’t

By Lisa Clark

Without hardly trying, Chloe got every comedian’s dream – their own show on TV, even more, she also got every sports lovers dream show, she was hosting her own sports show on a sports channel on TV. She was having a ball until she was attacked by the online trolls. People who didn’t know her were criticising her for her voice, her looks, her gender and her sexuality, when like us all she’s still trying to work herself out. Though she’s not wringing her hands or weeping at us about it, it has clearly been a very disturbing experience for someone who was never bullied about such things at school.

Chloe opens the show with an amusing glossary, a list of unusual terms that will appear in the show, giving us their meaning, so that we all understand them when they happen. As she explains the terms, the glossary starts to bleed into the show proper in which she braids several stories and ideas together, including tales from highschool contrasting with tales from her job in television. When the words from the glossary appear, they get a laugh despite not always being part of a punchline.

Chloe Petts has a very jolly, friendly demeanour, promising a “loose night” but as someone who has wrangled crowds in the UK, she is extremely adept at crowd work and dealing with any potential trouble makers. No one messes with Chloe, which could be why she was not bullied at school. She and her friendliness keep everyone onside, even when picking on audience members that might be getting a little boisterous, and her wit and dry humour keep the audience laughing.

Chloe Petts performs How You See Me, How You Don’t at the Melbourne Town Hall til April 20.

https://www.comedyfestival.com.au/browse-shows/chloe-petts/

Abby Howells – Welcome to My Dream

By Peter Newling

Over recent years Australia’s comedy clubs and television shows have been blessed with an influx of incredibly talented thirty-something New Zealand comedians. Abby Howell’s is an important voice in this mix.

She comes well credentialed. She is a past winner of the prestigious Billy T Award whose past winners include Cal Wilson, Rose Matafeo, Guy Montgomery and Melanie Bracewell. Fans of Taskmaster New Zealand will remember her from season 5 where she finished a solid fifth.

Through Welcome To My Dream, Howells offers us the chance to take a sneak peek into her mind. Much of the material is based on the impact of neurodivergence on her childhood, her family, her aspirations and her career. It’s really personal, really insightful, and really funny.

Often dreams don’t come true, but sometimes they do. Through masterful storytelling, Howells takes us from childhood expectations that she should be more like everyone else, to the growing realisation that difference is powerful. Along the way we learn that she is very good at vendettas – impishly seeking comeuppance on businesses, trolls and improv artists who have tried to thwart her dreams.

We also learn that Howells is a master of the punchy non-sequitur. Seemingly completely random thoughts are delivered with hilarious bluntness, and take us off on a completely new direction. It all makes sense eventually.

All this adds up to an hour that’s insightful, disarming and full of laugh-out-loud surprises. Howells’ style is endearing and engaging, underpinned with just the right amount of menace.

In Welcome To My Dream, Abby invites us to be part of her world. It’s well worth a visit.

Abby Howells – Welcome to My Dream is playing until April 20 at the Melbourne Town Hall Lunchroom, at 7:40pm and 6:40pm on Sundays. Tickets through

//www.comedyfestival.com.au/browse-shows/welcomed-to-my-dream/

** Footnote – the performance I saw was Auslan interpreted. Big shout out to the festival and to the performer for making this happen.

Sez – Keeps Me Young

By Lisa Clark

Sez is a country girl in the city reflecting on being in the world for a quarter of a century. Being a cabaret performer, she mostly does it in the form of comedy songs.

Sez has a very bright, confident, charming personality. She can hold the stage and warms the audience up with some silly call and response but there really isn’t a lot of singalongs so don’t worry/get your hopes up. Sez is a very good singer and excellent musician, playing her amusing comedy songs on three different instruments.

Most of Sez’s humour is fairly self deprecating and skims lightly over her topics, without any type of through line, the songs are short and end abruptly without a punchline. Sez, unsurprisingly, sings about all the issues of a person in their 20s, living in a share house, relationships and dealing with nasty social media comments. It’s amusing to watch a 25 year old reminiscing about being 20 and how young that is and there seemed to be no irony. It was hard to tell because Sez is pretty chirpy and upbeat throughout. Even when singing a scathing rebuke to a cheating boyfriend.

Keeps Me Young is a bit scrappy and waffly and  it’s sometimes hard to work out the point she is making but it’s certainly entertaining throughout. Sez says that we’re all here for a fun time and that’s what she presents, nothing too deep, no story line just a kooky collection of amusing anecdotes and songs.

Sez performs Keeps Me Young at the Victoria Hotel until April 20.

https://www.comedyfestival.com.au/browse-shows/keeps-me-young/

 

Lawrence Mooney – Dead Set Country 

By Nick Bugeja

Lawrence Mooney’s relocation to a remote rural town is the driving source of his material for his new show, Dead Set Country. This change of scenery has brought with it a fundamental change to everyday life for Mooney, from acquainting himself with the quixotic social mores of small town Australia, to caring and tending to (a little bit too much) for his horses. 

The show was engaging and humorous from beginning to end. It was clear that over the decades Mooney had cultivated a loyal and committed fanbase, who unfailingly succumbed to laughter upon every joke, story, and act out Mooney delivered. The brand of Mooney’s comedy certainly has particular appeal to those in and around his age bracket, with its inherently Australian quality, attacks on aspects of political correctness, and cultural touchstones (such as the television show Skippy). That is not to say however the show cannot be enjoyed by younger audiences — far from it. 

In Dead Set Country, Mooney plays to his strengths as a comedian, combining his personal experiences, social commentary and truly bizarre events to proper effect. His passion for his work has clearly not waned and he has served up a strong hour of stand-up comedy.

Lawrence Mooney Performs Dead Set Country at The Athenaeum until April 20

https://www.comedyfestival.com.au/browse-shows/lawrence-mooney/

Something Good

By Bella Jones

As a teenager one of the big thrills in life was picking your favourite band member, or actor from a tv show cast. The one that would forever be your ride or die, the most talented (or whoever had the best haircut.) But this is impossible to do with Something Good because every single one of them is just obscenely talented! (and they all have great hair!)

Something Good is an improv group that normally does Wednesday night improv shows at the iconic Comedy Republic venue, but during the comedy festival they have a weekly Saturday performance instead. And don’t let the 4:30pm start time fool you, absolutely anything can happen onstage. The only guarantee is that it will be hilarious.

All the performers are highly experienced improvisers who bring their own unique style and it’s genuinely nothing short of a joy to watch. As well as the ensemble cast, (many of which you might recognise from Thank God You’re Here, as this is partly how they prepare for the show) a well known comedian guest also joins in the fun, this week it’s  UK veteran comedian Mark Watson and Watson did an excellent job at slotting right in. Some of the funniest lines of the night could be attributed to him and the whole audience clearly delighted in his addition.

From hospitals to retail jobs just about every situation you can imagine is expored in the hour, with the kind of skill that can only be achieved by truly talented and passionate performers. Something Good is always must see for me, never failing to leave the audience breathless from laughing and raving as they leave.

The Melbourne International Comedy Festival run of Something Good is on at Comedy Republic on Saturday afternoons at 4.30pm until April 19.

https://www.comedyfestival.com.au/browse-shows/something-good/

Daniel Connell – Box-Headed Manbaby

By Nick Bugeja

Daniel Connell is already reasonably well-known in the Australian comedy circuit, and his latest show Box-Headed Manbaby will only serve to bolster his comedic credentials. With a likeable and easygoing cadence and sensibility, his frequently dark and sardonic humour catches you off guard, and it’s all the funnier for it.

Connell unlocks the humour latent in the banality of day to day life; walking through the streets of Melbourne, at the local coffee shop, on family holidays. He has a sharp sense for the comedic moments which punctuate the otherwise ordinary occurrences of life in middle-class Australia, rendering his show immediately relatable to its audience.

His crowd work, homing in on one particular audience member, drew the laughter of the audience at large. Unlike other comics who aim to disconcert and disparage (even if lightly), Connell’s crowd work always maintained a respect for his audience and was conducted in good faith.

The largest chunk of the focused on a recent family holiday in Bright, Victoria, and revolves around a particularly unsafe water slide which has stood for decades. By this juncture in the show, Connell had peppered the audience with joke after joke which invariably landed, and this extended recount of a trip to Bright gone wrong brought his performance to a hilarious climax.

Daniel Connell performs Box-Headed Manbaby at Max Watt’s until April 13

https://www.comedyfestival.com.au/browse-shows/daniel-connell-box-headed-manbaby/