If you’re a Festival punter who’s not interested in performers with juggernautical reputations or FM radio contracts, I highly recommend that you see The List Operators. I enjoyed it so much that I don’t really have any caveats. I do, however, have some worries:

If I tell you that this is comedy offered via the medium of the written list, you might get the impression this performance is formulaic and dull.

If I try to counter this by mentioning that it encompasses a semiotic analysis of an obtuse comedy sketch, the licentious touching of a drawing of Margaret Pomeranz and anthropomorphised fruit, you might get the impression that it’s affectedly “zany”.

Off-beat might be a better description of The List Operators’ tenor, and their website blurb describes them as the “darlings of the underground Melbourne comedy scene”. Thankfully this isn’t a euphemism for smut and obscenity; quite the opposite. With its genuine originality, gentle absurdity and underlying intelligence, the show is simply a little bit outside the mainstream.

The duo have created two immensely likeable characters who complement one another well. They take it in turns to address the easel of butcher’s paper which takes centre stage, frantically scribbling lists based on their own and the audience’s suggestions.

It succeeds in no small part because the show is interactive without being unstructured – it’s democratic without being a free-for-all. While audience-members’ list nominations often got the biggest laughs, there was never any suspicion that the performers were diverting too far from the script. To me, it’s this happy medium between control and disorder that makes for the best comedy.

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