His performance is an interactive game, where he tells eight tall tales and the audience is encouraged to guess which is a massive lie. As the show progresses, he records the crowd’s speculation on a faux blackboard with liquid chalk (a nice touch).

Jones is a pleasure to watch’he is refreshingly confident for a small-time comedian and is a likeable character with natural storytelling ability. There’s something a little bit Tony Martin-esque about his delivery, and the show’s vibe is similar to that of a slightly boozed share house chat involving a talented thespian and his housemates.

Most of the show is planned, yet Jones demonstrates his ability to improvise as he deals with both solicited and uninvited audience participation. Although his show was criminally unattended the night The Pun attended, all 12 of us were splitting our sides laughing. Even the drunken lout who was providing nonsensical (yet luckily non-threatening) commentary had a great time.

It is definitely worth braving the cold and the divey Exford Hotel for Seven True Stories and One Massive Lie. Jones is a genuinely funny comic’not at all cheesy, hammy or similar to any other kind of deli produce whatsoever.

Direct from his day job at a paint store, Ian Messig plays MC to Cameron Marshall and Karl Chandler in a tiny theatrette at Loop bar. The show is very DIY, as the comedians also double as ticket collectors and ushers. It’s not the best comedy choice if you’re into dazzling colours and theme music’it’s more of a raw white light, blank backdrop, casual clothes affair.

Although this is amateur comedy, all three comedians avoided (for the most part) sinking to the cheap smut genre made popular by Elephant and Wheelbarrow-style jokesters. Marshall favoured a kind of gag-punchline observational humour, which drew from popular culture. Chandler played up the role of the downtrodden storyteller but has not quite perfected an illusion of sympathy-inspiring insecurity, occasionally portraying the real thing instead. Messig is to be applauded for sheer nerve – he sings joke lyrics to Sinatra’s ‘Chicago’ completely a capella.

All three of these dollar dazzlers have some strong material, but their delivery is often not powerful enough to induce the laughter they deserve. Just like Easter eggs, these guys are on special. Check them out if you’re into inexpensive local laughs.

In her one-woman show Limited Sedition, Little bounds around a cluttered stage filled with props and costumes as she attempts to bring the Seven Acts of Sedition to life. She forecasts the impact of the new laws, before detailing how best to break them in public, and preferably while wearing a silly outfit. She even cracks out an overhead projector and subjects the audience to a PowerPoint presentation of ‘Sedition for Dummies’.

Although the show stumbled at times (Audio snippets weren’t always on cue, and Little seemed occasionally under-rehearsed.) Limited Sedition’s content is timely and wickedly rebellious. Her heart is definitely in the right place, even if her props aren’t.

As a result of the sedition amendment, Australian comics may find themselves hamstrung in their attempts to hang shit on the state. Comedians are apparently no longer allowed to sing about Alexander Downer smearing mayonnaise all over his body and letting his constituents lick it off. But this is exactly what Little does. Slagging-off ASIO and humorously unAustralian lyrics for our national anthem might also attract unwanted attention from Canberra.

Yes, Little may have employed tenuous segues to include her earlier material; yes, she accidentally dropped her plectrum inside her guitar, but she is refreshingly frank, passionate and well-informed.

Borrowing from TV gameshows, advertising, news bulletins, talkback radio and magazine horoscopes, Porthole woos its complacent audience before pulling an oversized metaphorical rug from under them. The show exploits common expectations to comic effect, distorting reality into something gruesome and absurd. The actors slide seamlessly between character roles, reporting ‘news’ like the world’s first reverse birth, before collapsing into a pair of sycophantic and masochistic clairvoyants. The sheer insanity of the dialogue, coupled with the duo’s poker-faced delivery, is so wonderfully ridiculous and unsettling you’ll find yourself simultaneously laughing, grimacing and shaking your head.

As the world’s first comedy show devised via SMS, Porthole moves swiftly, leaving little time to fully digest each moment of hilarity for future regurgitation; you may find yourself hankering for a transcript after the curtains have closed. The jokes that do linger will inspire sleepless nights, as you ponder whether ‘If you had one anxiety kitten, and you swapped it for two urinary budgies, would you be sick, or well’? The answer: well.

The ‘all-star rotating panel’ looked like they didn’t want to be there, and the lack of chemistry between them was replaced by a dull hum of animosity. Ribbing between Charlie Pickering and Fiona O’Loughlin appeared all but light-hearted, and the awkwardness grew as the show progressed.

I felt sorry for Jones, who often had to force laughter in order to create an illusion of joviality and to prevent jokes from falling flat. The crowd was incredibly unresponsive, apparently only vaguely amused by the bumbling banter and stagnant pauses. In fact, the audience became largely irrelevant as the comedians engaged in a game of one-upmanship of backhanded dinner party discourse. To be fair, the contestants occasionally struck improvisational gold, but it was never enough to fill the venue with laugher.

Several people walked out during the opening night of Hoodwinked’one can only hope that in the future, games can muster some semblance of on-stage chemistry and that copious amounts of alcohol are included in the ticket price.