Alex Murray
The Pun 2007 Reviews »
Never trust anyone who enjoyed high school.
In his grown-up festival show, brutal honesty is the name of the game for Josh Thomas, who mines his relationships with his parents, the school bully, the girl who sort of touched him while they were naked, and his testicles.
Winner of last year’s Raw Comedy competition, Thomas is an interesting new voice in Australian comedy. At nineteen years of age, he is a surprising discovery for a couple of reasons: firstly, for someone so new to the scene he has developed an interesting and …
The Pun 2006 Reviews »
Becoming a fan of Sammy J is exhausting. Like some sort of keyboard-wielding Pied Piper, J compels many of his fans, using his charm and charisma, to travel the length and breadth of the nation just to watch him perform. (I saw one particularly fanatical groupie at almost every show.).
Although Australia is the world’s smallest continent, it is fairly sparsely populated, which can make travelling between major capital cities a particularly gruelling process when you have an almost pathological inability to catch a plane. But it can make for a …
The Pun 2006 Reviews »
The Powder Room in the Melbourne Town Hall is muggy. Its hot and smoky moisture hangs heavy in the air. The stage backdrop is adorned with a black sign with silver letters that simply say ‘HELL’. Sweating, I do a quick stocktake of my recent behaviour and begin to worry.
However when Glenn Wool arrives on stage (looking nothing like his poster) I relax. It’s just a poorly ventilated room, and a loose theme that ties together a bloody funny hour of comedy.
Where to kick off a show is always difficult. …
The Pun 2006 Reviews »
For $6.99 I can get a kilo of mince from my local butchers. That does me for both a spag-bol and a taco night. Now that’s what I call tasty value. So when I saw a Comedy Festival show called $6.99 kg I immediately began to salivate in a base Pavlovian response.
Offering up five tasty morsels of raw Australian talent in the form of Pete Sharkey, Dana Katz, Dean Eizenberg, Clare Turner and Kieren Yap, $6.99 kg is served up in The Amber Lounge in a sort of yum cha …
The Pun 2006 Reviews »
So, he was an hour late. So, that meant standing in line for an hour and a half. So, it wasn’t his fault – other acts had run overtime. So, I began to sober up. So, by the time the show was over I was slipping towards a hangover. So, the Capitol Theatre is a venue that’s too large and impersonal. But I don’t blame you, Arj.
The constant tourer and regular visitor to wherever-the-bloody-hell-we-are, Arj Barker has built up a strong local following through appearances at festivals and stints on …
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