Fresh from her wine swigging, nugget-obsessing shenanigans in These Things Take Wine, cabaret performer returns to the Melbourne International Comedy Festival with a new show, simply called Adulting. While not explicitly connected, both shows deal with York attempting to get by in life and the frustrations and challenges faced - naturally expressed through song.
"I suppose the two [shows] go together well. They're both similarly autobiographical but Adulting includes more details about my engagement at 19, my obscene amount of parking fines and of course loads of love for my two favourite vices: wine and chicken nuggets!" York tells me. "Expect parodied songs about not being able to afford life, do things like our parents used to and that no matter how hard you pretend to do adult things, life can throw curve balls at you - no matter who you are!"
Everyone loves a good love story, which is exactly what Angella Dravid's show, Down the Rabbit Hole is based on. Dravid
recalls a turbulent relationship she had beginning from when she was 16 years
old and explores how love can make you go a little bit crazy and even end up in prison. Coming all the way from New Zealand, Dravid's show is bound to leave an impression on audiences during the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
After reading a few glowing reviews for the show - which I urge you to not do and just go along for the ride - I ask Dravid if she can tell me what her show is about without giving too much away. Her summation is one that sounds absolutely intriguing: "I don't know how to summarise it. It's a love story gone awry? It's a story that gets more and more horrifying."
Geraldine Quinn returns to the Melbourne International Comedy Festival with her brand new cabaret show, Queen Bitch. Quinn will truly be making lemons out of lemonade as she takes a look at her life over the last two years and comes to some realisations on how to cope when the going gets tough and that perhaps there is a light at the end of the tunnel but not in the way most people might realise.
"2016-17 for me was a pretty magnificent string of bad things happening. I ended up in hospital after a ridiculously small accident, my rental property flooded in minutes during a freak storm, I moved back out to the South-East suburbs which I'd been trying to escape for decades, gosh, SO much more happened - and then I got my dog, which weirdly wouldn't have happened without all the other nonsense," Quinn explains. "Queen Bitch is basically a show about trying not to be scared so much, because people are there for you more than you think, even when you feel very alone. As I developed the show, I realised the 'light' is everywhere, in weird corners, and some sort of light is always somewhere, you just have to turn around in the cave and squint a bit. Writing Queen Bitch made me realise how scared I have been to just live my life, and also how many people will help when you really need it."
Every year, as the Melbourne International Comedy Festival approaches, I vehemently urge people go and see a Neal Portenza show. It's comedy like you've probably seen before, only much much better. Well this year will be the last year I will recommend him because Neal Portenza is hanging up his little red beret and performing his final ever show.
"The rumours are true. This will be my last live Neal Portenza show. I expect there will be a national day of mourning followed by a blood moon at the conclusion of the festival," the brains behind the beauty of Neal, Joshua Ladgrove tells me. For his final send-off, Ladgrove has named his show Fafenefenoiby II: Return of the Ghost Boy, a title that is slightly different to previous shows P.O.R.T.E.N.Z.A and Neal Portenza: Neal Portenza Neal Portenza Neal Portenza Neal Portenza Neal Portenza Neal Portenza Neal Portenza. Tracey, but equally as perplexing and random. "Fafenefenoiby is a Shaun Micallef reference. Hopefully he won’t sue me, but what wonderful publicity if he does. Audiences can expect a shell of a man performing his 22 last ever live shows with a mixture of genuine abandon and cavalier intimacy," he says.
She was the winner of Deadly Funny at the 2014 Melbourne International Comedy Festival, and now in 2018, Steph Tisdell is presenting her debut show, Identify Steft at this year's festival. Tisdell, who has also been named the Funniest Aboriginal Woman in Australia looks at what 'sorry day' means to her and sharing her thoughts on white guilt and racism However, her show will also delve further into the more personal with Tisdell sharing her own mental health struggles and identity issues.
"Both my awful mental health and my identity crisis were actually what inspired this show. I desperately wanted to know more things about my culture but there were roadblocks everywhere. From every angle," she explains. "I needed to tell MY story. Which is one of feeling pride and fear at the same time. And I know it's one that a lot of Aboriginal people feel, certainly if they're mixed race."
