Every year there are trends and themes that run through the comedy festival. It’s surely an accident – comedy, especially stand-up, is most often a solitary affair, and comedians rarely converse about their material during its development. It’s like Hollywood producing Deep Impact and Armageddon at the same time – a possible coincidence, but probably informed by the same influences behind the scenes. (The Internet informs me that this year it’s “mall cop comedies” Paul Blart: Mall Cop and Observe and Report.)

So what’s going on in comedy this year?

First there’s a massive explosion in musical comedy. I say explosion; really the number of shows in the cabaret and music categories have been growing over the last couple of years, but in 2009 we seem to reached some sort of critical mass. It’s an area I’ve been surprised to learn isn’t to a lot of people’s tastes – I find the phrase “I don’t want to see a musical show” almost as shocking as “I don’t like female comedians”, though not for quite the same reasons. Still, I’m all for seeing more musical comedy, as you might imagine from my previous article.

Nostalgia is out in force too. My beloved noticed this more keenly than I; we’re at just the right ages with just enough years between us to straddle the Gen X/Gen Y divide, meaning there are some cultural references that go right over her head. When I say ’some’, I mean ‘loads’ – it seems a bunch of Gen X comedians are coming up to 30 and feel a need to assert their boyishness (mostly it’s the guys doing this) by doing jokes about Voltron, high school and 80s/90s culture. This is not a sub-conscious decision: Lawrence Leung described his television show Choose Your Own Adventure as “nerdcore whimsy”, and it applies equally well to his live show with Andrew McClelland, Time Ninjas. In both, the comedians revisit their school days, as does Sammy J in his show 1999. There are plenty of comedians peppering their stand-up with similar stuff, and while I enjoy it, I have to wonder: how many teens and 20-somethings are out there in the audience wondering what all the fuss is about?

Speaking of whimsy, The Age seems to have gone a bit nuts over this topic, with both an article and a Last Laugh blog post. Both equate whimsy with  ‘nice’ and attempt to make us choose between nice and angry, with Craig Platt of Last Laugh suggesting the latter is superior. Obviously there’s room for both; for every Josie Long, Josh Earl or Maeve Higgins there’s a Brendan Burns, Matt Elsbury or Mike Wilmot. Hell, even Dave Hughes is at least quite annoyed. Comedy doesn’t have to be in your face to have an edge or be ‘laugh out loud’ funny; being gentle is just a stylistic choice. I’m all for railing against the dying of the light, but I do enjoy a good dose of hope and wonder, too. That this sort of thing is seen as childish or second-rate is symptomatic of the attitude that keeps science from attaining its proper place in our lives as a source of endless surprise and delight. So: whimsy is in, but it’s not replacing anything, and it’s not a new phenomenon either.

Another interesting trend this year is comedy about comedy, with a number of shows exploring the industry – and indeed comedy itself. Dave Bloustein’s The Social Contract tells a true story of being sued after a nightmare gig, and in doing so necessarily exposes how the business side of comedy works. Geraldine Quinn’s Hex in the City mixes quite a dose of struggling artist style actor reality into a story of modern witch-hunting. Damian Callinan has created the character of struggling comic Dave Berry for Is This Thing On?, and gets quite meta when he shows up during the story as himself, hosting a comedy competition which Berry has entered. As audience numbers have grown over the last few years, the people coming back for more have become quite literate about the art of stand-up, to the point where it’s almost de rigeur to comment on the structure of a show or break from the narrative (not to mention the fourth wall, where one exists). I’m not generally a fan of this, unless handled naturally in the flow of the piece, but in skilled hands it can be great cheeky fun. The key is that there must be comedy in the act to do comedy-about-comedy about…

Whilst not really a theme, I’d like to close with quality. There seems to be a real surge in good shows this year. I didn’t see any stinkers last year (and I saw nearly 40 shows), but I heard of plenty – cause for alarm as the festival grew larger again in 2009. This year, I’ve only heard of two or three epic fails. It really is hard to make a choice of what to see this year, and I hope you’re having a similar experience. There’s only a week and a bit left, so get out there!

But enough about my experience; I’m just one guy, after all. What trends have you noticed this year? A downturn in reality television jokes? More Facebook humour? Perhaps more comedians in waistcoats? Let me know!

Finished reading this article? You might also like:

• Great minds…
• Mother Of The Year Featuring Nelly Thomas, Christine Basil & Catherine Deveny
• Damian Callinan in Is This Thing On? – The Dave Berry Story