Karate Man: A Live-Action Video Game review (Melbourne International Comedy Festival)

It's 1988 and Karatetown has been overrun by pesky goons. Luckily Karate Man is here to save the day. But can he expel all the goons AND get the girl? Karate Man: A Live Action Video Game comes from the ingenious minds of BEAK (Daniel Scarratt and Bruno Dubosarsky) where the entire story takes place in the style of an 80s arcade game.

The audience gets to dictate the narrative and all of Karate Man's movements, because as the show title subtly alludes to, this is a live-action video game. We are given a demonstration of the controller functions and then it's up to us to lead our hero to victory. Through some creative use of Bluetooth technology, when someone presses 'punch", the word is boomed over a speaker and Karate Man punches. If "left" is pressed, then the word left is announced, and Karate Man moves left. It's a fantastic way to get audience invested and engaged in the story.

She Slayed: A Drag Murder Mystery review (Melbourne International Comedy Festival)

What happens when four drag divas try to put on a show together? With such big egos and big hair, there can only be one answer: murder. She Slayed: A Drag Murder Mystery is a deliciously camp, uproarious whodunnit of a drag queen who is viciously murdered - but in a fashionable way.

Created by Nicholas Reynolds, She Slayed feels like it's a drag show pretending to be a comedy show instead of a comedy show pretending to be a drag show, and this is partly because of the four cast members and the confidence and experience they have as performers. The script, while allowing for plenty of ad-libbing and improv, is full of great one liners and sassy retorts between the characters. Reynolds has played to the individual strengths of the cast and so the concern here is not about finding the truth of their character but to go out there and have fun, which spills out into the audience.

#SWIFTTOK review (Melbourne International Comedy Festival)

There's no denying that Taylor Swift is one of the most influential pop stars the world has seen. Her recent concert tour in Melbourne is said to have injected $174 million into the local economy. There are a lot of "Swifties" out there, and one of them is Dean Robinson. Their TikTok is dedicated to all things Swift and they have amassed a following of over 17,000 people, which makes them the right person to put on a show about the Swift Sensation.

In #SWIFTTOK, Robinson “plays” an obsessed 14-year-old fan who knows everything about Swift. They share the conspiracy theories surrounding new album release dates and discuss all the easter eggs that Swift leaves in her songs and lyrics for fans to decipher. Some sound so incredibly far-fetched but these are legitimate claims about Swift and her career.

Good Girl review (Melbourne International Comedy Festival)

Why have we waited so long for Roxie Halley to be doing a solo sketch show? Regardless of the answer, the utter delight that Good Girl provides its audience is well worth the wait. With all 13 characters performed by Halley, the comedy explores the expectations that are put upon women through a variety of characters and sketches.

Halley has created a diverse mix of women for this show. From faded tv starlets trying to retain their sex appeal, to a teenage girl obsessing about her weight and being hot and a woman feeling just a little bit fragile at her lavish birthday party. She finds an authenticity with each one that allows these characters to be something deeper than merely a laughing point.

Please Clap review (Melbourne International Comedy Festival)

There isn't much of a description for what Reuben Solo's Please Clap is going to be about, except that it is likely to be a frenzied, disorderly series of live sketch comedy. Which is as accurate as you can get for a show that even though has a structure in place, seems to make a lot of what we witness on the fly.

Solo begins the show strongly with some fun audience interactions which includes moving people around, introducing him to the stage and having one person give him the harshest insult they can - and boy, did he cop it on the night attended with the most brutal sledge you could give to a performer.

Little Aussie Battler review (Melbourne International Comedy Festival)

Lucky number 13. That's how many festival shows Australian comedian Daniel Connell had to make before I saw one of his shows, and I picked a good one. In Little Aussie Battler, Connell shares stories that the everyday hardworking family and individual can relate to while building them up and having them come across as very unique and eccentric. 

His observations about the world around him float from the expected, such as teenager retail assistant with attitudes and what you do when you're hit with the horrible realisation that you have been burgled, and the somewhat unexpected, such as his recent browser history on animals. A highlight of the show - despite questioning the validity of his claim - lies with the tomfoolery that Connell states he gets up to in bookstores and then seeing how that leads him off into an even more priceless moment surrounding book reporting.

When I Grow Up... review (Melbourne International Comedy Festival)

It's the age-old question: what do you want to be when you grow up? As a child, you might say doctor, teacher, police officer...but then there's also the kids that want to be famous, a rock star, an athlete or even a penguin. In Jeromaia Detto's comedy show When I Grow Up..., audience suggestions of what they wanted to be when they were children are played out on stage in an improvised hour of laughter.

It's evident from the second Detto appears in the room, he's here for a good time and that joy and sense of play spreads throughout the room. He's very talented at guiding the audience and letting them know what to do without putting them on the spot or placing any pressure on them. You're never uncertain of what your role is, and even if you are, Detto will find a way of incorporating that into the scene.