I’m hardly the first to wax lyrical (ha!) on the art of musical comedy, but of all the comedy arenas it’s one of the ones I get geekiest about. There’s a great lineage there, perhaps a clearer one than many other kinds of comedy – no doubt because it can be attached to the history of music, itself a fascinating area of study. From the high comedy art of Victor Borge and PDQ Bach through seminal satirists Tom Lehrer and Flanders and Swann, the musical parody and punk-inspired anarchy of Not the Nine O’Clock News and the Doug Anthony All-Stars to modern Australian giants like the Scared Weird Little Guys and Tripod, it’s quite a subject to wade into. As much as I enjoyed Tripod’s fallacious 2007 history of musical comedy (or ‘momedy’), How to Train an Attack Dog from Scratch – perhaps the best example of the entirely made up comedy lecture – I can’t help but think there’s a great show in doing it “for realz”, as the kids say.

My own personal tastes come straight out of Bill Oddie’s advice: good musical comedy should be good music first, and good comedy second. That said, there are many different styles of musical comedy; far more than the two Comedy Festival categories of ‘cabaret’ and ‘music’ would suggest – and it’s as popular as it’s ever been. History aside, let’s take a squiz at the variety on offer:

• Comedy with music in – this is probably the most common form, and isn’t even always advertised as musical. In a festival-length show, anything that injects a bit of variety into what is otherwise someone talking for an hour is generally welcome (which isn’t to say most comedians get along fine with an hour of just cracking jokes or telling stories). Songs from this category are rarely ones you wish you could buy on iTunes, and serious musos often hate them – not least because comedians in this bracket rarely have voices better than competent karaoke standard, or ‘good enough for rock and roll’. The most common mistakes with this style are making a song too long, or repeating bits; unless the song is amazing, we don’t want to hear the exact same gag more than once. Used sparingly and/or executed well, though, they’ll certainly make you laugh as part of a show, and sometimes the crapness is part of the gag.
  There are a few sub-categories:
  • Filking – the art of taking a popular song and changing the lyrics to be about something else. The term ‘filking’ comes from sci-fi fandom, and is an intentional corruption of ‘folk’, since originally the practice referred to rewriting folk song lyrics to be about Star Trek. ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic does this on an grand scale for his parodies, with musical genius and low-brow comedy. Stand-up comedians, lacking a band with an extraordinary talent for mimicry, generally do without the genius: they use either a karaoke backing track or a few basic guitar chords. The results vary wildly but in the right hands it’s great fun, especially if you like the chosen song.
    Examples: Janelle Koenig – Swell, Simon Pampena in Super Mega Maths Battle for Planet Earth!
  • “I wrote a song about it” – some comedians go the extra step and write their own music as well as lyrics, though again this seldom goes further than a few simple guitar chords. It’s basically filking without license fees, though note the degree of difficulty depends entirely on ambition and musical style. The songs are rarely great musically, but as always there are exceptions and even the musically suss ones can survive on charm and clever lyrics.
    Examples: Josh Earl is XXVII, David O’Doherty – Let’s Comedy, Jimeoin, Lawrence Leung & Andrew McClelland – Time Ninjas, Lano and Woodley
  • The production number – this one’s a rarity, and often comes as a surprise; it refers to comedians who have spent some time and effort on making the song a big, bold, brassy part of the show. Comedians attempting this gambit are usually at a higher than average vocal standard and may have worked with proper musos to write and record the music. The end product often relies on the incongruity of dropping musical theatre conventions into an otherwise straight comedy show, but when it’s pulled off well it can be as effective as a Broadway show-stopper.
    Examples: Tim Minchin – Ready For This? (in addition to his usual stuff; see below); I know I’ve seen more of these, but I can’t think of any right now – suggest some in the comments!
• Music with comedy in – this category is reserved for comedians who are trained musicians whose comedy shows make great albums. Non-musical material generally consists of banter between songs, used to set up any necessary premise; most songs in this category stand on their own, though. There are two main types:
  • Real people – the comedian is a musician and is doing their own stuff (or, at least, is doing their on-stage persona’s own stuff – though that’s a subject worthy of it’s own Geek Comedy 101). This is the stuff that rock star comedians are made of.
    Examples: The Bedroom Philosopher – Songs From the 86 Tram, Tim Minchin – Ready For This?, Tom Lehrer, Flanders and Swann, Geraldine Quinn – Hex and the City
  • Real characters – the act is essentially a parody, often of a group whose fortunes are fading or with a twist. This sometimes means the band is deliberately a bit crap, but since the show still consists mainly of their music, it always hits a mark – even if it’s one created specifically for the show.
    Examples: Wilson Dixon Rides Again, Otis Lee Crenshaw Featuring Special Guest Rich Hall, Die Roten Punkte – Robot/Lion Tour, The Axis of Awesome vs Bee
• “Proper” musical comedy – mixing comedy and music together in equal measure, these performers come from a variety of backgrounds and styles. It’s not easy to make a generalisation about this sort of thing, so I won’t. Here are my fairly arbitrary categories:
  • Straight up – this is the most familiar kind of musical comedy – a blend of stand-up banter, sometimes in character, with original comedy songs. Arguably this works best with a group.
    Examples: The Doug Anthony All-Stars, Tripod – Idio Clips, Hooray For Everything, Scared Weird Little Guys, Cutthroat: The Story of Two Guys Who Stuck their Necks Out
  • Cabaret – probably deserves an article all on its own, since even luminaries in the field cannot agree on a specific definition. At the crap end is so-called “Sondheim on a stool” – a collection of Broadway repertoire show tunes vaguely linked by a story of the artist’s life. At it’s best, though, cabaret taps into a rich history of social and political commentary, original songs and music, and a distinct lack of fourth wall. It might take the form of sultry singing, musical sketch or any one of a number of things, but when it’s good, it’s very very good.
    Examples: I am Glace Chase, Karin Muiznieks, Evening: A Cabaret, Dolls Cabaret, Eddie Perfect, Geraldine Quinn – Hex and the City
  • Musical theatre – tacking ‘The Musical’ onto the end of a show title has become stupidly popular, but just like having the words ‘Best of’ in the title, it means nothing in and of itself. ‘The Musical’ shows often fall into one of the above less music-heavy categories (like Howard: The Musical) or aren’t really musical at all (like Rod Quantock’s 2050 A.D.: The Musical, Hannah Gadsby’s Meat: the Musical or University revue’s Melbourne Model: The Musical). This lax attitude to calling something a musical is all the more galling when you consider how demanding the genuine article is, requiring as it does devotion to at least three disciplines: music, acting and comedy. Add in dance – and so few comedy festival ‘musicals’ do – and that’s four areas that must all work together. Luckily for us there have been some great musicals in the past few years – though perhaps surprising is the number of improvised musical shows in recent years.
    Examples: Keating!, Shane Warne: The Musical, World War Wonderful!, Call Girls the Musical, Spontaneous Broadway

So that’s my vaguely taxonomic analysis of musical comedy trends. It’s not perfect; some acts have wandered between categories (Geraldine Quinn and Karin Muiznieks spring to mind), and I don’t know quite where to put the Suitcase Royale Space Show, for example. It’s closer to The Mighty Boosh than any of the above. Is it musical theatre? Sketch-based cabaret? Something else entirely? Let me know what you think – and what shows you’ve seen, and how they fit into the above.

Finished reading this article? You might also like:

• Dolls Cabaret
• Geek comedy 101: the comedy lecture
• The oddball, the outcast, the geek