Chloe Walker
The Pun, The Pun 2010, The Pun 2010 Reviews »
American business guru Tom Peters says that the secret to success is to ‘under promise and over deliver’. Funny Irishman and tiny Yamaha keyboard guru David O’Doherty appears to subscribe to this advice.
His first song for the evening instructs the audience to ‘please lower your expectations’. Then he tells us how bad he is at telling jokes. Then he laments that every review he has ever received has essentially said, ‘It’s good, I suppose. If you’re into that sort of thing.’ And then he over delivers.
O’Doherty’s sense of humour is …
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When it comes to self-deprecating humour, Felicity Ward can deprecate with the best of them. Her performance at last year’s MICF, Felicity Ward’s Ugly as a Child Variety Show, contained a liberal sprinkling of anecdotes about her idiotic misadventures. This year she cracks open the Book of Moron, a hefty tome she has penned full of stories of her own stupidity.
Wearing a blazer and cravat and clutching a pipe to her mouth, Felicity sits in a comfy armchair and reads aloud from her book. Across the way onstage, fellow Ronnie …
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The unofficial title of Reginald D. Hunter’s show is Trophy Nigga, owing to the media’s habit of booking him for commentary only when race-related issues are in the news. His response to such requests is to insist that he be introduced as ‘Reginald – King of the Blacks!’, which tends to be a dealbreaker.
He has a reputation for controversy and an obvious, deep-seated belief that everyone should get their thoughts, no matter how unpopular, out in the open. A recent profile in The Age said that he has been labelled …
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Born in Egypt, brought up in Sydney and banned in Rockhampton, Akmal Saleh’s stand-up show It’s Not My Fault is based on extracts from his recently-published memoir, The Life of Akmal. Musings on being raised in the Coptic Orthodox Church, battling through ‘special English’ class as a new Australian, and the early days of his comedy career give us a CliffsNotes version of the book.
Akmal calls it like he sees it – and then ducks. His quip that ‘the Lebs took the credit for inventing felafel, and they also took …
The Pun, The Pun 2009, The Pun 2009 Reviews »
Ben Darsow has aspirations to be one of the world’s great supermarket managers. In the meantime, he’s doing stand-up to get by. His show, Connected, is all about plugging in to the flow of life and using it to go for your goals and ‘be the best version of yourself that you can be’. But don’t be put off by the high-falutin’ self-helpy theme of the show – Ben is one cheeky little dude.
Hailing from Adelaide, Ben’s stand-up style is chilled out, friendly and down to earth. His material meanders …
The Pun, The Pun 2007, The Pun 2007 Reviews »
Everyone has a tale of the one that got away. For Fox K, it’s Emily, last seen aged seven on a family beach holiday. Consumed by the notion that she could be his soul mate, Fox tells his story of his quest to find her (aided by his trusty sidekick, Stefan) and speculates on how his life might have turned out with Emily.
The show is a mixture of stand-up and storytelling with some video thrown in. It has a cosy feel, not just because of the small (but noisy) venue …
The Pun, The Pun 2007, The Pun 2007 Reviews »
So you missed out on tickets for Dylan Moran, and you’re reading this review to see if he was shit so that you can stop kicking yourself for not being more organised, because you love watching ‘Black Books’ and you wanted to know if Moran is just like Bernard Black in real life, and you never get to go out and it’s not fair etc.
Well, prepare yourself because I have bad news. Moran was marvellous. He was very, very funny. He is just like Bernard’obstreperous, acerbic, surreal and slightly harried. …
The Pun, The Pun 2007, The Pun 2007 Reviews »
I don’t get this show.
On the one hand, it features three highly polished, superbly entertaining burlesque performances. On the other hand, these are couched within a plodding, cringe-worthy panel-style show complete with fading rock star jokes and mullet wigs. One minute, we’re sucked in by a striptease; the next, we’re shifting uncomfortably in our seats as the host and judges ‘pretend’ to sexually harass the stars.
The acts change from one night to the next, but we were treated to three consummate performers. Lola the Vamp is classic in the Edwardian …
The Pun, The Pun 2006, The Pun 2006 Interviews »
To anyone who has ever ’solved’ a Rubik’s cube by peeling off the stickers and rearranging them, go to Lawrence Leung’s show The Marvellous Misadventures of Puzzle Boy. Lawrence has spent the last 20 years trying to learn the secret behind solving the iconic 80s puzzle toy. “There are hundreds of different methods, but they all require a lot of memory and pattern recognition, and the most important thing is patience,” he says. So has he cracked it?
You’ll have to see the show to find out. Puzzle Boy covers autobiographical …
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Question: what if Australia’s pre-eminent political comedian, described by The Age as ‘a living Melbourne treasure’, were charged as a terrorist? It could happen. Last week Rod Quantock hosted The Inaugural Golden Guy Fawkes Award, in which local and international comedians competed for the ‘Comedian Most Likely to Blow-Up Parliament’ Award. Quantock was expecting some very special visitors to the event, held at The Old Melbourne Gaol.
‘I sent invitations to ASIO and the Chief of Police,’ he says. But how would we know if they were in the audience? ‘They’re …
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Michael Camilleri made his directorial debut during the L’Or‚àö?al Melbourne Fashion Festival a few years ago with ‘a weird, arty performance, art fashion parade at a strip club in Brunswick.’ This year, the two-time Melbourne Fringe Festival award winner has turned his hand to opera with an absurd update of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale. The show has been nominated for three Green Room Awards (for Best Director, Best Production and Best Conductor), which is interesting considering that Camilleri has never worked in opera before. ‘They wanted someone to spice things up …
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Etymologically speaking, the word ’smorgasbord’ is a back-formation of the word ‘Smorgy’s’, which is used to describe all-you-can-eat buffet-style restaurants. By extension, Smorgasbord is a buffet-style comedy show, serving up a selection of skits, stand-up, films and songs from behind the sneeze guard. Unfortunately, like the food at Smorgy’s, the comedy at Smorgasbord is somewhat lacking in nutritional value.
The main problem is the delivery. Lead comedian Dave Ryan needs to bone up on his vocal skills, and his sidekick Diane Armstrong sounded terribly over-rehearsed and stilted. The show made use …
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The Lion, the Bitch and the Closet are, in fact, three separate acts in this darkly funny triple treat.
Jeremy Lion is the first of two acts from Edinburgh, playing a washed up ‘children’s performer’ who bumbles and belches his way through a story time play. As he gets progressively drunker, Jeremy and his pianist, Lesley, stuff up their lines, break props and generally make a dirty mess of things. If you can judge a performer by their ability to deal with some hideously obnoxious hecklers, then Jeremy is a pro”If …
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Kids love poo jokes. Hell, so do I. Luckily, this show is full of them.
Kung Fu DaPu (pronounced DuPWA of course) is a modern day sewerperhero who lives within the bowels (sorry) of Melbourne’s sewerage system. DaPu and his sidekick, Number One, seek to educate the world about water sustainability, while battling their evil nemesis, a giant cotton tip with a French accent and anger management issues.
Brought to us by Melbourne Water, the show uses puppetry, hip hop and lots of puns to deliver its message. Unfortunately, I wasn’t convinced …
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LaLaLuna is the story of the night the light went out in the moon, and its caretaker, played by Wolfe Bowart of The Schneedles, had to find a way to defy gravity and replace the bulb. During his quest, though, Bowart (equal parts mime, magician, acrobat and clown) keeps getting distracted’by the washing, a concert performance, and piles and piles of toy rabbits.
This is traditional, old-fashioned clowning. As in, juggling, riding around on a unicycle and sticking your head inside a giant latex bubble kind of traditional. Some people are …
The Pun, The Pun 2006, The Pun 2006 Reviews »
It occurs to us here at The Pun that the majority of our readers would have been unlucky in obtaining tickets to the sold out Gala show at the start of this festival. So here I am, reviewing The Gala in it’s most commonly seen format, as presented by the good people at Network Ten a week and a half later.
Since this is the Festival’s 20th birthday, The Gala was a huge event with over 20 comedians, all of whom were at least mildly amusing during their five minute sets …
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