Through coincidence and good luck, I received tickets to three Melbourne International Comedy Festival shows. I do not know anything about comedy outside of Netflix specials and US late-night shows. My background is that bland- my experience doesn’t extend past white American stand-up. Now, as an expert after three shows, I wish to share my opinion on the professional capabilities of these creatives.
Garry Starr Performs Everything
Tuesday April 10, Malthouse, Merlyn Theatre
My comedy virginity was taken by Garry Starr. I think so anyway- it was my partner who Starr fed spaghetti mouth to mouth while mounting him. I just watched with tears-of-laughter in my eyes, hoping not to be next.
Starr’s aim for his first solo show was very simple: saving theatre before arts inevitable extinction. He sought this through stellar choreographed hilarity, performing every aspect of theatre within an hour. Smartly, he knew he could not accomplish this feat alone and, luckily, his performative charisma allowed his reliance on the audience to join the fight for theatre’s survival paid off. With ease, audience members seamlessly joined the stage, or Starr awkwardly climbed his legging-strad body into the audience. Within the set, Starr intelligently nuanced theatre while still coming across as an in real life goofy cartoon character. Not to go off track from critiquing his comedy specialty but, with my background in dance where I still look like an awkward loon 99% of the time, I appreciated his fluidity, core strength and clean lines as he danced his way through theatre genres. To be so brilliant whilst ridiculous is something to admire.
Betty Grumble: Love & Anger
Tuesday April 10, Malthouse, Merlyn Theatre
Grumble’s aim was a little bit more ambitious than Starr saving theatre: she wished to save the world. Flamboyant and confident, Grumble used her body as a dynamic prop to explore…. well, her body. During her hour-long show, she satirized perceptions of female body and embraced the angry feminist trope. Through smearing shit across her bare rear end and throwing it into the audience and stamping her paint-covered vagina on paper repeatedly for distribution, she generously shared her fierce veracity with the cheering crowd. Her bold niche was generously championed by the pretty much all-female audience. As a woman, with a woman’s body, I felt comfortable with Grumble’s radically present nudity. Maybe after years of dick jock’s infiltrating humour, I finally had something to relate to.
However, boundaries were pushed to the edge; I was left wondering if it was comedy or performative art. Sometimes the over-politicalised messages accompanied by jumpy lighting and shouting sacrificed clear expression and forced me to exert energy on trying to interpret her “Avant Garde feminist comedy” rather than relaxing into the show. Nevertheless, in the closing act (involving an audience member inserting something somewhere in Grumble’s body), I learned something: comedy comes in more shapes and sizes than American white dude stand-up.
Keep Calm It’s British Comedy
Friday April 13, Elephant and Wheelbarrow, some function room
Compared to the previous two shows, I saw Keep Calm It’s British Comedy on a Friday night without the coming weekday’s anxiety weighing on my mind. I was also with a large group of friends. As a natural cynic, being with people who are falling off their chairs in laughter allowed me to relax a little more… or maybe it was the two glasses of wine.
More traditional than the shows I attended earlier in the week, the 5 act stand-up came with every type of British accent. Some acts were slow, lame and dry. But that was ok, being brought up by second-generation Brits and spending time in the motherland itself, despondency and depression passing as humour is natural to me. Stand outs included a slap-stick-esque duo taking the crowd by storm and one comedian’s critique of the posh habit to cheek-wobble when confronted with ghastly news. The final act, a justification of marijuana use through the argument of individuality effecting experience, was rhythmic, executed with appropriate sequence and tone, but was ruined for my politically correct self by over-reliance on non-ironic sexist overtones.
I have completed my initiation into the world of comedy having explored the possibilities of humour through the realms of theatre, feminism and Britain. Above all, I learnt comedy isn’t a passive exeprience. Knowing the immense barrel of laughs and food for thought it provides, I am eager to experience more of the MICF’s offerings.
Ritik Sharma April 18, 2018
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