Category: Melbourne International Comedy Festival

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/

Fergus Neal Fergie Ferg

By Bella Jones

Back in 2023 Fergus Neal got cancelled by The Daily Mail, something most of us can only dream of. Since that canon event he’s been blowing up on social media, co-hosts a podcast and even got interviewed on Sunrise.

His latest show ‘Fergie Ferg’ is a little bit about that, and a little bit about everything from coaching a basketball team to Corey Worthington to animals in cages. There’s something for everyone!

Listed in LinkedIn as Content Creator / Content Writer / Junior Creative / Copywriter, Fergus is probably best known for his funny TikTok and Instagram content. Happily Fergus has mastered the art of telling a joke without getting bogged down, the result is a fast moving show that races from topic to topic, with breaks for well executed crowd work.

It would be perhaps of benefit if some of the material was more refined, even if just to make the punchlines have more impact, but live comedy is something he is working on and doing fairly well considering he is only in his third year of performing comedy festival shows.

Neal certainly entertains the crowd and is unsurprisingly on the up.

Fergus Neal performs Fergie Ferg at the Grace Darling Hotel until April 6.

https://www.comedyfestival.com.au/browse-shows/fergie-ferg/

Dom McCusker – Be Gae Do Crime

By Lisa Clark

If you’ve ever dreamed of running away to sea ala The Gentleman Pirate Stede Bonnet of Our Flag Means Death, or Elizabeth Swann of Pirates of the Caribbean, Dom McCusker is proof that you can find a jolly life working on the sea, while also keeping people laughing and singing.

Dom is a very different kind of Musical comedian. She found her way to the sea via singing sea shanties which led to working as a comedy sailor on tourist boats to party boat tours and working on the tall wooden ships such as replicas of historical ships like The Endeavor. Dom has hosted teenagers in need, Grand Prix fans celebrating a car race on a boat and the ubiquitous “booze cruise” drunken work parties. In between singing very silly sea shanties with us Dom has many amusing tales and anecdotes to regale us with. Dom has an interesting background and has seen some things!

She tells us sailor’s secrets like flag lore and their own sailing language, very important when the crew you board with is always different, from all walks of life with varied skills and experience. Luckily they have shared language and of course a passion for sailing. They bond working together under diversity,  the shared love of sailing, hard work, and seasickness, then before you know it, you have found a new family.

Be Gae Do Crime is a delightfully jaunty show that’s about 60% original funny sea shanties written by Dom and the audience is encouraged to join in, but it is very voluntary. If you don’t want to sing, you can clap or tap a foot, or not. It is hard to resist though, as they are utterly delightful. My only advice to Dom is that she needs a bigger flip chart or screen to present the singalong lyrics. The lyrics can be more complex than you expect and they are hand written in cursive on a small sheet of paper – hardly visible from the second row, let alone the back of the room. Still, the audience only joins in on the chorus and you can gradually pick it up.

Dom performs shanties and comedy for her day job on boats and she was a 2024 Victorian RAW State Finalist, so although this is her festival debut, she is confident, charming and entertaining, keeping audiences laughing both at sea and on shore

Dom McCusker performs Be Gae Do Crime at Storyville until April 6

https://www.comedyfestival.com.au/browse-shows/be-gae-do-crime/

 

Charlie Lewin – Frogaccini

By Bella Jones

Charlie Lewin’s Frogaccini is unlike anything else at this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Part traditional stand up and part cabaret Lewin effortlessly balances stories of millennial nostalgia and missed dessert with the highly engaging musical plot of a gay frog who lives in the Vatican.

Lewin is a writer and producer for Channel 10’s The Project and co-hosts queer pop culture podcast POPGAYS but it would be hard to argue that onstage isn’t where he belongs. Lewin is not only an incredibly talented singer, but also a master of timing and stage presence.

Melbourne’s StoryVille serves as the perfect venue with its whimsical theme only helping to draw the crowd into what is both an extremely well performed and also surprisingly emotional tale of a gay frog who dreams of something more. The duel storyline makes sure that the performance never lags and the audience is engaged the whole time. All of this builds to a finish that has the whole crowd singing and leaving the show on an absolute high. Frogaccini is a must-see for anyone who enjoys good writing, Chappell Roan or has had the experience of their idols being embarrassing.

Frogaccini is on at Storyville until April 6

https://www.comedyfestival.com.au/browse-shows/frogaccini/

Brynley Stent – Soft Carnage

By Lisa Clark

Brynley Stent is not a household name in Australia yet, though fans of NZ Taskmaster will know her, but she’s bound to make a big splash here. She’s certainly one of the funniest comedians I’ve seen to come out of New Zealand and they’re mostly pretty good.

There is no audience banter or small talk, Brynley gets right into the business at hand of making her audience fall about laughing. Brynley tackles the mundane frustrations of life such as self check out and all the small social faux pas we fear making and makes them epic, really capturing the inner excruciating pain and taking the ideas to places you don’t expect.

Soft carnage is not a standup show as such, it is so much more. This show has everything; running gags, surprise story arcs, a nemesis, endearing hand drawn backdrops, magnificent props and grandiose impressions that all come at you from weirder angles than you would expect. Brynley throws herself into everything with great gusto and appears quite exhausted towards the end.

Soft Carnage has Award winning show written all over it. It’s highly polished, dealing with modern life and issues including the horrors of A.I. It has brilliant tech and BIG props that had to be hauled over the ditch for us. The dark humour is unexpected from this seemingly cheery, breezy young woman, but there are hints at a real heart breaking backstory, and yet there are the most gut aching belly laughs throughout the show that had me breathless and some members of the audience I was in just fell apart.

It is not at all surprising that Brynley was awarded one the top comedy award in New Zealand, the Billy T award. Soft Carnage completely blew me away, but it is surprising how small her room is. I am raving about this show to anyone who comes within my vicinity, it will sell out, so you should buy tickets now.

Brynley Stent performs Soft Carnage at the Victoria Hotel at 9.10/8.10 until April 20

https://www.comedyfestival.com.au/browse-shows/soft-carnage/

Lehmo – I Have To Tell You About A Thing I Did

By Nick Bugeja 

Anthony Lehmann’s (‘Lehmo’) latest show, I Have To Tell You About A Thing I Did, is a fast paced hour of storytelling, jokes and crowd work. Known for his part on Utopia, work on the panel AFL comedy show Before the Game and radio, Lehmo doesn’t lean on his fame to garner easy laughs. Instead, his show is made up of personal stories, observations and well-crafted jokes and throwbacks, demonstrating his skill as a stand-up comic among other talents.

The show is framed around Lehmo’s recent visit to Papua New Guinea to conquer the Kokoda Trail, an expedition ripe for misadventure and humour. Lehmo recalls a fellow trekker whose preparation consisted of ice skating, the guide climbing the trail in adidas slides and his disconnection from technology (including his wife who couldn’t reach him).

Much of the show explores domestic life, and the tension and conflicts which arise with his wife and son. This is familiar territory for Lehmo and unsurprisingly, this section is a real highlight, delivering the biggest laughs of the show. Lehmo’s run at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival is short, but certainly one worth fitting into your schedule. He’s a professional at ease on stage, and I Have To Tell You About A Thing I Did is a consistently funny and entertaining show.

I Have To Tell You About A Thing I Did is on at Beer Deluxe until March 31

https://www.comedyfestival.com.au/browse-shows/lehmo-show/