Tom Valcanis
The Pun 2012 Reviews »
I’ll admit, I’m a huge metalhead (well, I am 6’2” and I have trouble getting caps to fit, but that’s another story). Steve Hughes has made major waves in the global comedy community as the straight-talking, logic-twisting Heavy Metal comedian. This acclaim shows, he nearly sold-out the main room at Melbourne Town Hall.
Like a darkly comic Robert Anton Wilson, Hughes fired his first verbal salvo at New Zealand, asking if it was “even real” (a loud cry of “yisss!” from the audience followed). Then he had Australiain his sights, eliciting …
The Pun 2012 Reviews »
Is there More Than This? Brenna Glazebrook wasn’t convinced a few short years ago. Staring heartbreak and paucity square in the face, she moved to spider-infested Sydney to start anew. This provides the inspiration for a comically solid fifty minute trip into Glazebrook’s life over the last couple of years. Accompanied by her “Swedish Paul Shaffer” Maya, the iTunes Enter-key presser sat to the side of the compact Spleen Bar stage.
Like a paean to the miserable with added laugh track, Glazebrook sharply took us through her unhealthy adolescent obsession with …
The Pun 2012 Reviews »
In an unceremonious alleyway, borderline sociopath, racist and philandering billionaire John Bearington the Third lies dead. This ‘muppet-noir’ stares Dylan Cole as the slick-talking, dressed-to-the-nines Detective Cole Feltz (the only human with a speaking part). We watch as he interrogates five likely muppet suspects who all had their respective gripes with the darkly departed Bearington.
Kicking off with a short film establishing motive and Feltz collecting evidence with a team of hapless police muppets, the action begins on stage at about a quarter past eleven, focus squarely locked on black piece …
Featured, The Pun 2012 Reviews »
Out of the way and next to the Yarra, Signal is a simple venue fitted for the simple lessons from a wide-eyed boy named Luis. Luis and co are embarking on an adventure to the Kidney Kingdom (riffing off of the Wizard of Oz) to find his kindly father a new kidney.
This man with the heart of a boy (his age most likely in single digits) wears knitted op-shop jumpers, his hair neatly slicked back and walks through life over-awed by almost everything, adopting an honestly upbeat attitude (until the …
The Pun 2012 Reviews »
By his own admission, Michael Chamberlin lives in a constant state of either joy or despair – no grey areas to be found in his life of loneliness, bewilderment and often crippling neuroses. A screenwriter by trade, Michael has written for Skithouse, Rove Live and Adam Hills in Gordon St. Tonight, and has even lent words to the legendary John Cleese. A veteran comedy writer and stand-up comic, Chamberlin has won acclaim far and wide for the last decade, but it seems that his dream joyride has now run into …
The Pun 2012 Reviews »
Dave Purcell looked a bit cramped on the Butterfly Club stage for Mix Tape, flanked by an upright piano and accompanied by his guitarist and drummer. The audience numbered no more than 20, but the room which scarcely fitted 15 was heat-choked. Our backs ached on the wooden “pews” during this hour long set comprised of stand-up, self-deprecating storytelling and music.
Bedraggled, dishevilled and dreadlocked, Dave’s cheery polemics against organized religion, poverty, war, ecology, the unsustainability of oil as an energy source (“We went to war for oil but why isn’t it cheaper?”) …
The Pun 2011 Reviews »
In arguably one of the zaniest shows of the festival, Jett Rogers isn’t a comedian – he’s a rock ‘n’ roll detective. From the future. Sound good to you? Read on.
The washed up, inappropriately silver spandex-clad frontman for a band (one that was tragically killed in an accident) maniacally searches the galaxy for a missing Bob Geldof – who looks surprisingly together for over 200 years old – as rock stars are dropping off like flies. But all is not what it seems.
Jett, played with aplomb by Fox Michaels, takes …
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