A man after our own heart, Tim Vine prides himself on keeping the art of the pun alive. Not just a pun-tastic title, this show promises (or threatens) to offer the most puns-per-show ratio of the festival.

Wil Anderson: Wilful Misconduct

Ever year we open the festival guide to see what truly terrible name-based pun Anderson has gone with this time around. Not one to disappoint, this year it is Wilful Misconduct.

Dean Arcuri – To Sir with Glove ?!

What else would you call a show about fetishism? Enough said.

Peter Berner in Binge Thinker

Yup, now that’s a title we can get behind. Pure pun.

The Polar Bearings – Songs in the Sea, Major?

Not content with a pun title, this duo have actually given themselves a pun name. And the two puns compliment each other. Solid gold.

Lawrence Mooney is theatrical, educated and dramatic throughout his entire performance – to the point where you can almost imagine that you’re watching high-class theatre interspersed with knob gags. He makes the lowbrow seem almost highbrow (take note of that ‘almosts’ in there).

He uses stories of his recent past to recount failures, inviting you to laugh at his mistakes with him, and string along the point that through it all his fiance has been laughing with him, no matter how much he stuffs things up. It is clear throughout the show that Mooney loves her for this, and it’s material that he’s comfortable with, and comes from the heart.

In coming up with a show that appeals to women, Mooney has managed to come up with a show that appeals to everyone. And while that is clearly the intention of every comedian, it takes a skilled one to accomplish it.

Freshly graduated from school, Bo Burnham is an internet celebrity with a Comedy Channel special already under his belt. Or to be more accurate, under his tracky dack elastic band, because he shrugged onto stage in similar garb to that which he wears in his bedroom-bound Youtube videos. He either knew exactly what he was doing or was still suffering from being on Massachusetts time. With the crowd roaring with laughter a few minutes later, the answer was clear.

Bo writes songs on his keyboard in a basic Channel Nine Sunday Night Scoreboard sort of way, but then uses the rhythmic structure to wield wordplay, contrive over-the-top offensive puns, and make a T-shirtload of sex, gay and toilet jokes. His topics are exactly what you’d expect from within a classroom – including references to hot-button issues like race, religion and abortion – but he has twisted the ideas and words to take it a whole lot of levels above school yard banter. His recall, especially in the centre of dense, convoluted raps, is dead impressive and he has worked rhythm and alliteration into lyrics which are otherwise only there to rhyme with oncoming punchlines. There are hits-and-misses, but no flat spots.

On a Festival Club night when several women audibly reacted to MC Randy’s use of the C-word, Bo had everyone loving his similarly touch-n-go material. His young, slacker good looks are slightly undermining his underdog, uncool chic, but nothing could deny the talent required to deliver offence so enjoyably.

Audience members entered this four-hander play wearing badges boasting ‘Sexy’ or ‘Perv’ and were greeted at lights up by Muddy Waters’ ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’ and tight brown lounge suits bulging at the crotch. It’s a bar scene and Bernie (David Bramble) sweats sexual animalism as he regales his mate Danny (Ben Griffiths) with last night’s conquest. It could almost be a scene from Underbelly 2, with Bernie spitting lines through his handlebar moustache.

But it’s not. Sexual Perversity in Chicago was written by Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright David Mamet back in the early seventies – and it feels that way. Women’s liberation was well underway and masculinity in this new shared space was being tested. References to war and immaturity splatter the bawdy script as the two men grate and gyrate against the two women, played by Kellie Tori and Eleanor Jones. However these themes flit in and out of view, overpowered by the standard men-versus-women theme comedy audiences are so familiar with.

The actors and director Ami-Lou Sharpe have worked hard to keep the show pacy – and the spot-lit set is simple, stylish and effective – but the tone is uneven. Drama and subtext sat mostly separate to the comedic potential of gender politics or Bernie’s buffoonery and they undermined each other. Mamet has a reputation for dialogue that veers from sharp and direct to unfinished and indirect, but this preview show left us wondering if something was lost when shortening the original 70-80 minute play to 60 minutes.

If you’re heading along, embrace the characters’ immaturity for the most enjoyment.

Luckily, you know not to stop at this potentially bad sign, and for that you’ll be rewarded. This light-hearted caper is enriched with fun, clever writing which easily wins over the room. Testament to this play’s amusing invention is the fact that this is a murder mystery with only two actors, and yet no clue of the ultimate culprit.

Alex Ellis and Phil Ormsby are mercilessly melodramatic and easily fill La Mama’s small space – unsurprisingly, since they have already toured this show extensively throughout New Zealand. Originally rigging up the sound, set and lighting themselves, they are now joined by director Caitlin Dullard who has brought them and their joyous caper to Melbourne.

This is quite a silly show, but allows for a fantastically physical performance by Ormsby, and the tongue-in-cheek writing elevates it above simple farce. Felicia Fargo (Alex Ellis) and her assistant Dorian (one of Ormsby’s many characters) have the sharpest lines. With a few plot twists and turns, you’ll find yourself really enjoying it. Especially if you’re a New Zealander – apparently chocolate fishes are really big there.

This is a confident production that entertains you during set changes with quick, funny skits or medleys of old TV show themes – reminiscent of Round The Twist, Seinfeld or Ship 2 Shore. The whole cast works well together as they change age, costume, race and even gender in increasingly fidgety, farcical plot lines. In particular, Matt Bolger-Hobson has great comedic presence, like a sober Jason Gann with better hair. Sketches wander up dead end streets and accents wander over oceans, but the high spirits and big characters remain.

The writers clearly had more fun throwing things into the script than throwing anything out, but the opening night crowd of well-wishers got enough laughs to paper over the flat spots. It will be interesting to see how the show develops – such a tight group will no doubt adapt things as their run continues. If you are looking for loud and local, this is one for you.

Perched in peach-coloured shirts, the band played keyboard and varnished string instruments as they welcomed in the audience. Location is a defining factor of cabaret (smoky nightclubs or themed restaurants being the norm) so the restrained surrounds of the Old Chamber Rooms at Trades Hall gave the Duskbuskers an uphill battle. But hills aren’t so important in modern warfare, and they quickly won this battle with Aurora Kurth emerging in diva-esque, shimmering red silk. Her velvety vocals weren’t an immediate match with the bar room banter of Casey Bennetto of Keating! The Musical fame, but they embraced this to build some men-versus-women interplay.

This show isn’t strictly comedy. As their promotion says, it is about the time in-between light and dark – the grey gloaming that turns down the colour and noise, fuzzing and re-focussing the mind as we search out pockets of light where we can meet for a yarn and a yard glass. Evening: A Cabaret’s stereotype-centred jokes and more effective made-for-Melbourne observations are intersected by denser lyricism suggesting the desires and insecurities suffered in night-time pursuits of love. Poetry slips by without punch line, and the feel of the evening changes. Barbecue observations slide into deeper explorations of the hazy mind and by the time the band was singing “the less they know, the more they understand” it felt almost subversive.

Perhaps a second viewing would help (Aurora sings one song twice, enabling the clever wordplay to become much more apparent), but overall the thigh-slapping is reserved for the jaunty music.

There’s no denying Francisco is a talented mimic (he’s an internet viral sensation for his near perfect impressions of Don LaFontaine, the movie trailer voice) and much of his show is sound effects and voice work, but some of his impressions just don’t hit the mark and his jokes all feel haphazard and somewhat incomplete.

He’s relentless with the strip club/porn star/humping topics, makes outrageous actions on stage and apparent habits include ruining people’s karaoke by squawking. The only part of the show I found moderately amusing was his ‘hand jokes’ at the very end – new material he’d scribbled on his palm during the show. The rest of his set, I found juvenile, disjointed, repetitive and tiresome. If I hadn’t needed to review it, I would have walked out.

Although unpolished and with generous lashings of cheese, there were some gold moments in the show. With two actors and two stand-up comics, various strengths came to the fore in the mixed bag of stand up, skits, and just plain random moments.

Commencing with a traditional aboriginal dance, with what I can only guess is some kind of fertility ritual mainly played out on 70’s themed nightclub dance floors, and moving through skits, stand-up and a long running Mundine joke, there appeared to be little continuity or common themes beyond a self deprecating humour and general piss take of Australia in the post-Rudd, post-apology, post-politically correct world.

Highlights included newsreader Anita Blackman, who came into her own after the election of Australia’s first black Prime Minister, with his revolutionary policies for white families to encourage community (“if you don’t have an extended family, one will be allocated to you…. if you don’t have some guilt, this will also be allocated…”) I am certain that the SORRY song and dance routine had some audience members squirming in their smug, white, middle class liberal guilt.

Although I think this show is up there with one of the worst show titles in the whole festival, when the joke actually did rear its head after substantial build-up, it all became clear and worked for me. In the end; the final word goes to the players – “if you liked the show, tell your friends – if you didn’t, you are racist.” Fair enough really.