The Age 2023 Melbourne International Comedy Festival reviews

Posted on April 5, 2023January 19, 2024 by lefa

I’m pleased to be reviewing MICF shows for The Age this year. I first started reviewing MICF in the early 2000s for street press such as Beat magazine and in the years since have published literally hundreds of reviews in newspapers, online publications, zines, and radio programs. Comedy, with its mix of storytelling and/with humour (especially when through the prism of the personal being political), is my favourite live performance art form.

Reviews on The Age:

Jordan Gray

Jordan Gray is the hero Melbourne deserves and needs right now, bringing trans joy to the face of a city that has recently had to stare down transphobic Nazis.
The Age, April 5 2023

Grace Jarvis

Watching Jarvis embrace the things that bring her delight and invite us in to enjoy them with her is in turn delightful for the audience.

The Age, April 12 2023

Ashley Apap

For punters still unable to get to live performances, shows like Outer Child are a godsend, giving you the chance to whet your comedy-loving whistles.

The Age, April 12 2023

Prue Blake

With self-assured delivery and a commitment to going the extra mile to make a gag work, this is a thoroughly enjoyable show.

The Age, April 12 2023

Lizzy Hoo

Whether talking about office jobs she loathed or bringing Australian culture to Mongolia, Hoo is in the flow. There’s no dark to offset the light, no life lesson to take home, and not a single lull. It’s peppy, positive, and a damn good time.
The Age, April 5 2023

Lara Ricote

Lara Ricote is presenting comedy as real as the truths you’re serving up in the all-women group chat of your most trusted friends. From flirty to filthy, it’s as wonderful as it is wicked.
The Age, April 5 2023

Scout Boxall

Scout Boxall is what happens if you’re raised on a diet of educational media, including the nightly news, Oregon Trail, the history channel, and Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing: an adult with a true crime and conspiracy theory obsession – one not killed off by working for five years as a court reporter.
The Age, April 4 2023

Laura Davis

As the show unfolds, unravels, tangles, untangles and turns back on itself, we are brought full circle and Davis’ skill at weaving a story you didn’t know you were being told is unveiled. It’s remarkable and gratifying in equal measure.
The Age, April 4 2023

James Nokise

These deeply personal stories demonstrate a remarkable ability to draw the political from the personal in a way that avoids proselytising and endears him to the audience.
The Age, April 4 2023

New Order: Chloe Petts, Rob Auton, Huge Davies

Huge Davies ends the night with deadpan delivery and a keyboard that he wields to deliver musical comedy and comedy about music, both of which have a delicious dark streak.
The Age, April 4 2023

Dane Simpson

Dane Simpson named his show Always Was, Always Will Be…Funny on a whim, but it’s easy to imagine the funny kid he was when watching the cheeky, likeable performer he is now.
The Age, April 4 2023

Bec Petriatis

Here’s a performer who keeps the laughs rolling, the snark light and the atmosphere warm – just like a good Christmas.
The Age, April 4 2023

MICF Review 2015 – Stuart Bowden: Before Us

Posted on April 8, 2015October 17, 2017 by lefa

The latest tale from storyteller Stuart Bowden delivers a melancholic and bittersweet hour of entertainment.

Before us were our parents, and our collective human race. Before the lime green bulbous creation on stage before us were also her parents, her collective race, but they’re all dead now she tells us. This is the true story of her death, her extinction.

The latest of Stuart Bowden’s creations is this forest-dwelling creature living alone under a rock. In a mix of storytelling, dance and music, the tale of this creature, the last of her kind, on her last night alive, unfolds. Her loneliness is a melancholic offering to us. Her lamenting songs and soliloquies explore the loss of her family and friends and the emptiness of having her once adored perfect form now languishing with no-one who understands its beauty left to admire it.

While Bowden’s work is often discussed in terms like lo-fi, the truth is Before Us is deceptively simple. The lo-fi costume and lighting are an understated companion to the tightly woven, precisely executed story. The live looping Casio keyboard, banjo ukulele and sung soundtracks create an emotion-charged backing to the storytelling and dancing.

Where some use dance and physical theatre as an overblown dramatic technique, it is the darting precision of movement in the creature’s walk and the whole-body expression in her dancing that have the audience investing in her truth. There is no over-exaggerated, embarrassed stereotype of interpretive dance, but instead a measured expression of the emotion she is experiencing.

Taking the audience’s discomfort with the intimate performance and sometimes surreal material, Bowden commits entirely to his beautifully drawn character and her final hours. He uses suspense and repetition to deliberately provoke and disquiet the audience, keeping them as awkward and unsettled as she is laying her unfamiliar form bare before us. Her vulnerability makes for compelling viewing.

Bowden’s great talent is in taking the audience along with him, coaxing their participation in this surreal journey. Despite the usual resistance of being pulled further on stage and into the action that most audiences are comfortable with, when Bowden draws them into the tale they follow willingly. It is this talent that takes the surreal material from the unusual to the sublime.

In a tale that makes the audience confront death, loneliness, isolation and failed connection the humour here is a tender, wistful, perfectly bittersweet kind.

This review first appeared on Arts Hub as part of their MICF 2015 coverage.

MICF 2015 – Three down, infinity to go…

Posted on April 2, 2015October 17, 2017 by lefa

I started my MICF 2015 off with a great night. This photo was captured by the MICF official Jeez Louise photographer, who is dashing around asking audiences about their favourite female comics. I usually avoid being photographed like the plague, but couldn’t resist sharing how I’d enjoyed my darling friend Sarah Bennetto’s show. It was the first I saw this year, in the Ladies Lounge at the Forum, and it was such a heartwarmingly lovely way to kick off my festival. Sarah is an effervescent joy on and off stage, and audiences adore her.

After Sarah’s show I headed up to Trades Hall to see Lawrence Leung and Andrew McClelland’s shows, both of which were the best I have seen from either of them in years, perhaps ever (and that’s saying something). I love, love, loved them. Lawrence’s show was a return to a more pared-back, standup format. It allowed him to focus on delivering a high-energy, high-laugh performance which the audience ate up. He’s been getting consistently good reviews, and it is easy to see why. Andy’s show nearly killed me. Literally. I laughed so hard I choked. I left with my stomach aching and my cheeks hurting. I can’t speak highly enough of it.

With shows like this on my first night, the bar has been set very high for the rest of the season.

MICF 2015

Posted on March 30, 2015October 17, 2017 by lefa

Melbourne International Comedy Festival 2015 kicks off today, and it looks to be a bumper year. I have managed to create an ambitious schedule where I attempt to fit in all the shows I would like to see, but it is hard to balance the realistic aims of seeing as many as I would like with the reality of writing reviews and features on them all.

I’ll be updating here with reviews after they have been published on their original sites (I’m reviewing for Arts Hub and Lip), and I hope to have a long-form essay on an aspect of comedy/the festival at some stage.