There is no one in the world doing comedy quite the way Jo Randerson does it. The maverick kiwi performer’s Billy T Award nominated show Jo Randerson’s Skazzle Dazzle entirely defies genre with its addled blend of characterisation, dance, theatre, puppetry and ‘wig-work’. The show’s (extremely loose) narrative typifies Randerson’s highly original and offbeat style: an alien entity is abandoned on earth in an ‘experiment’ and undergoes a series of bizzare transformations in a quest to discover its true identity.
The broad themes of the show explore loneliness, alienation and …

Three performers, one long table and a cavalcade of kitchen utensils. Sound like a stupid idea for a Comedy Festival show? It is, but it works so well.

Men of Steel is an amazing idea, performed perfectly with a great sense of fun and some downright stupidity. Following the adventures of some alien gingerbread cookie cutters landing in a kitchen-world, Men of Steel flips from flying lettuce monsters to the violent murder of an opera singing bag of popcorn, right through to the birth of giant gingerbread men. It’s a performance …

As a well-established Australian comic, Dave Grant owns his stage with an authority that comes from knowing his craft implicitly and his crowd intimately. The bulk of the punters who buy tickets to Dave Grant know what they’re in for: an old-fashioned serve of ‘male’ Aussie humour. This is not to say his line-up is full of dick jokes – far from it – but the material strikes a chord with every bloke who has ever had a VB showdown with his mates.
MAN the MYTH is all about initiation into …

Whilst Jimeoin’s high-profile demands a large venue, there’s always a risk in the Main Town Hall that the dress circle and balcony members will feel like they’re watching from the moon. Comedy always seems to work better in semi intimate venues, especially if there are facial expressions underpinning the jokes. Despite Jimeoin’s charisma, the sheer distance between the stage and the Town Hall’s upper decks leaves an audience member feeling a little uninvolved. It’s a pity because so much of Jimeoin’s material depends on our ability to feel a certain …

The concept behind 160 Characters is highly inventive and fundamentally simple: the audience forwards unusual text messages to a phone number on stage, and the improvisers create funny skits from the incoming texts – sketch SMS, if you will. It’s a great strategy for involving the audience and ensuring the content of the show is diverse and entertaining.
Text messages range from gushy sentimentality (‘I am the coral to your ocean, darling.’) to pointless everyday observations (‘I’m having a sore boob day.’). It’s an excellent formula for improv, which requires random …

The secret to a good joke? It’s all in the context, baby.
If you saw the Easter Monday Short Film Festival screening (plagued by projector issues, disgruntled audience members and rapid exits) you may have been underwhelmed. However, the Awards Night screening was blessed with a sense of pomp and ceremony. Our most convivial host, Brian Nankervis, did a sterling job of warming the crowd up and helping the event flow smoothly (if only he had been at every screening). There was also a sense of Melburnian pride, adding to the …

This woman spent an hour recounting tales of childhood, parenthood and everything in between. She comes from an enormous Irish family and has contributed five of her own children to the mix, which in itself seems to be ample material for a show. O’Loughlin also insists that the audience understands just how thick and lazy she is, through numerous self-deprecating tales that leave the audience both cringing and laughing.
There is a real sense of conversation to this show, as though you’ve just met Fiona at the pub and she’s decided …

Coming into Coney Island Comedy, I had my reservations. Watching people with a liking for razor blade diets and rubber band masks wasn’t my idea of a beer and a laugh.
I walked out pleasantly surprised but for different reasons. It would be misleading to approach the show expecting some of the world’s finest comic talents.?? Instead, you’ll meet an assembly of talented – and bizarre – street performers, like a young man from a town called Penguin who learnt how to swallow swords over the internet (Is there anything you …

Scrabble Unscripted is a daring and innovative concept that fans of improvisation comedy will love. A team of five improvisers stand ready to create scenes from a live scrabble game played by a guest comedian and a scrabble champion. Intermittently the host Steve Lynch picks words from the game and the improvisers act them out in short scenes. Some great guest comedians are promised, including Tom Gleeson and Dave Callan.
This concept leans towards comedy that is even less structured than its closest comparison theatresports, and this is both a blessing …

Unlike the open mic night at your local pub, the Raw Comedy National Grand Final, ‘Australia’s biggest open mic comedy competition’, required talent??and there was talent aplenty! I admit that I had prepared myself for the occasional cough of polite appreciation and maybe even a few Englishman, Irishman and Scotsman jokes, but clearly I should have had more faith in today’s emerging comedians. 13 acts, whittled down from the seven-hundred or so who auditioned, hardly showed a skerrick of nervousness and genuinely made the audience laugh and applaud with appreciation. …

On a soggy Sunday afternoon in Footscray, the parental gratitude in the room was tangible. Musicians had wacky teeth bearing hats, and balloons and squeaky objects were causing a commotion. The animated offspring of an appreciative and burgeoning audience were up at the front. At this free concert, the atmosphere was a unique and loopy mix of kids party anarchy (Had this band been summoned out of a cracker?) and brooding brass heavy jazz: the Wiggles meet Blue Note.
The musical possibilities of jazz and toys intrigued me. I thought of …

In the tradition of the well-known US sitcom ‘Herman’s Head’, Yianni plays the roles of the four dominant voices in his head: love, logic, fear and libido (the latter bizarrely yet somehow aptly named ‘Pierre’). He narrates their journey through a relationship (spotting, meeting, relationship, breaking up), jumping in and out of character as required.
Each voice has a different personality, and while each was distinct, the character development was better in some than others. It was no coincidence that ‘Pierre’, the hilarious Libido, was the only named voice, as he …

Did you know that the master tapes, with precious sound, music and voice recordings, of the original Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory mysteriously disappeared just before the film’s release in the ’70s? The whole film had to be rewritten and dubbed around that silly Roald Dahl book.
Luckily, the people behind Wonka! found the masters and interpreted them into their own hilarious show. It is the original film onscreen with live voice-over, sound effects and music. It’s a bit confusing at first, but don’t look towards the group of performers …

Forget Mariah Carey, forget J-Lo – Wes Snelling is the new modern day diva. He has the walk, the look and, most importantly, the attitude. Of course, one would hope that it’s all played up for laughs on stage, especially considering his poor, ever suffering assistant Steven Weir who bares the brunt of most of Snelling’s bile and self inflated ego. But that’s what this show is all about: watching Wes strut and sing in an attempt to record a live version of his soon-to-be hit single, with Steven accompanying …

What I’ll loosely term ‘humour’ in Trevor Major is…Throbbie Millions is largely derived from the Throbbie Millions character (a cunningly disguised parody of the real Robbie Williams) being an up-himself talentless shit. Technically, it uses the time-honoured tradition of turning pop songs into parodies by turning keywords and phrases into scatological and sexual references, with a wee bit of mocking the disabled. Because everyone knows epilepsy is comedy gold.
The idea of a show based entirely on a Robbie Williams parody runs into trouble almost immediately. The inexplicable Mr. Williams has …

‘Thank God It’s Funny! Thank God It’s Friday! Thank God It’s The Festival!’ – and that’s exactly what it is: funny, Friday and the Festival. TGIF is a great show that gives new and upcoming comedians a chance to showcase the best of their talent in a five to ten minute space and the audience a peek at what they would see if they were to see the actual show. TGIF reminded me of a night of taste testing.
TGIF is upstairs at Tonik, a funky, cosy bar located in a …