Charting a coming of age journey, the overall presentation successfully shifts the original Mad Max characters into new personas that engage the audience in an hilarious flash-back dream-noir style super flick. The well-considered storyline runs to a tight script with a hint of improvisation to suit the mood, and overlays new narrative situations that revel in the lost possibilities of the original flicks, recontextualising the lowlights into comedic highlights, and of course, concocting a forbidden love story along the way.

There is a certain clunkiness to the mashed (edited) screen excerpts, as they butt against each other in their newly ordered visual chronicle, but this is pleasing, as each scene operates as an independent frame within a larger series of images, and is reminiscent of a comic book experience.

Foley artists Blaine Cooper and Lil O’Neill work intensely behind the crowd with their sound set-up: cabbages, foam balls, shoes, guitars and hairspray to generate the sound effects, and should function as a core element of the performance, if you can pull your eyes away from the visual directive the projected image commands.

The show will appeal to both hardcore Mad Max fans, for whom these movies are embedded with cult status into their psyche, and also to those less familiar with the originals, as the script engages a variety of old and new pop culture screen references. A fine embodiment of the Fair Use for Satire and Parody clause in Australian Copyright Law, The Mad Max Remix should be seen on all accounts.

That’s what coming to comedy festival is all about’a new experience with someone you wouldn’t invite, for reasons of personal safety, to entertain you in your own home. And, for censorship reasons, someone you would never see on commercial television, even at late night.

But it will always be safe, as Jones quite responsibly offers a range of self help and group therapy options. Take Screaming Therapy, which can be used as a resolution tool in bumpy relationships, or the very voluntary All Male Group Hug, on stage, with sexy name calling.

Jones’s grasp of audience dynamics and his ability to engage in a non-linear way enables this journey through his unique and wholly real internal psycho-scape. At the end, you’ll be left with a few very interesting pontifications on goldfish souls and their roles in exorcismsǃ?

Top shelf Town Planner and self-confessed Sign Approver, Ben Lomas takes us through the daily protocols of correct business card exchange and competitive office morning tea grievances procedures. Standing out as a definitive highlight is the sharp wit of Elvin Ho, clearly a self-starter, who spends his days in the office challenging the mechanisms of public service workplace inclusive practices with his self-ridiculing racist toilet graffiti campaign. Scott Steensma leads, in true grey-suit style, a question time/press conference at the end of the show giving the audience the chance to probe into the murky depths of these hardworking, and perhaps pharmaceutically-oriented, taxpayer-funded characters.

If your office workplace has an upcoming planning meeting to plan the operational plan, then this is the show for you.

Expect the mandatory gags about drugs (of any sort), murderers, how Melbourne stole the Grand Prix, and the inherent boredom of living in the city of churches and the resulting strange things the locals feel compelled to do.

Boasting a varying line-up of Adelaide comedians, many of whom have made the trek to the Melbourne International Comedy Festival for the very first time, this show guarantees diversity in both style and humour.

Craig Egan gives a punchy performance as MC, and Jarrod Fitch is a definite highlight. Combining natural ease with a confident routine, Fisch steals the show. Particularly fervent is his languid, tender ode to his childhood babysitter’s inappropriate sexual advances.

With the last few shows this coming weekend, and a promised supplemented line-up of various Adelaide comedians currently performing in the Festival, Something In The Water is a must do.

It was a self-confessed atrocity of error – with the added misfortune of a reviewer and two filming documentary-makers in the audience. Grobelny’s quip regarding two girls who didn’t laugh as they sat in paying attendance at his gig the night before’the ones he therefore told to ‘Fuck off back where they came from’ – probably didn’t encourage any further sympathy from his captive audience.

A hard venue to create a fuzzy love-in-and-let’s-laugh atmosphere, the upstairs room at Pony is somewhat cold and unforgiving as a comedic site. Such conditions surely present an added challenge and anxiety for any comedian performing there, and as a reviewer this must be taken into account.

(A growing congregation of leather-clad punk-rockers on ground level, impatiently awaiting their sound check as the comedy show ran overtime, greeted all in attendance upon our prompt departure from the venue. I hope you made it out alive, Michal.)

Redeeming potential exists however for a strong and powerful routine based on Grobelny’s intelligent use of black, sideways thinking, and stream of consciousness delivery. We shall look forward to his improvement next year.

It’s a typical day in the office, and Vaya Pashos, aka Vaya the Slayer from the Annihilators Team, has arrived with tissues, coffee, a magazine, and a box of Wet Ones for wiping down the shared headset and keyboard.

After a year as a telemarketer, Vaya has ample material for a suite of bona fide, full-bodied satire, and it’s her remarkable ability to parody this soul destroying daily charade that keeps the audience engaged, entertained and in a state of unprompted empathy.

With the show heavily reliant on audio cues for outbound calls and postmodern thought bubbles, which illuminated internal narratives, the sound may have needed some closer attention. Some thought bubbles risked popping in thin air and awkward silence, before the audience was afforded the right to have the ‘Play’ button pressed in a timely manner.

However, the casualness of on stage costume changes and a technical handicap seemed to appeal to a forgiving audience for whom casual was closely linked with likeable, accessible and humbly local. Vaya Pashos champions a capital L for Local content in an international festival. Her 2006 festival act stations a fine example of ingenious hilarity that doesn’t need to be flown in or flounced around.