Pepito - Melbourne International Comedy Festival review

Performer Viggo Venn, of Zack and Viggo fame, returns to Melbourne for his solo physical comedy show, Pepito. There’s a very goofy appeal to Venn in his tattered top hat and tailcoat. Using a select number of props and a loop pedal, Pepito is a great time to just be present in the moment and allow yourself to be enveloped by the comedy on display. 

Shows like Pepito, which require audiences to be more than passive watchers, take on a huge element of risk. Pick the wrong person and there is a strong possibility that they could completely derail your show. While this doesn’t happen on the evening in question, Venn works hard at making it look easy to stay in control. At one point, he has an audience member making the sound effects to his intergalactic quest to find his missing ball. While it’s unlikely Venn had anticipated he’d end up making out with a door called James, he runs with it wholeheartedly.

Kula review | Melbourne International Comedy Festival | The Butterfly Club

With the number of physical theatre and clowning shows in the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, it can become difficult to decide which one is worth your time and money. If you were to take a gamble with UK duo The Kagools (Nicola Wilkinson and Claire Ford) and their show Kula, it would be a pretty safe bet that you would walk out in a pretty damn good mood. The show was the winner of best comedy at the 2017 Adelaide Fringe Weekly Awards and it's easy to see why.

While it takes a little while to warm to their style of humour, once the two have got you under their spell, there’s no turning back. Kula is reliant on audience participation and the ones chosen in this instance are all more than happy to go along for the ride. Wilkinson and Ford find humour in the simplest of things, yet things we wouldn't ordinarily see the humour in as an adult, which is a shame because watching a volunteer attempt to eat a biscuit that is resting on his face - without using his hands - is one of the funniest things I’ve seen during this festival.

Now - Melbourne International Comedy Festival review

Scottish comedian Daniel Sloss claims his 2017 Melbourne International Comedy Festival show So? was responsible for breaking up relationships left right and centre. This year, he returns to Melbourne with his new show Now, where instead of dissecting audiences' relationships, he has turned his attention inwards in an attempt to determine whether he is a sociopath and if he is, is it such a terrible thing? 

Sloss has a knack of raising contentious issues but remaining in control of the conversation and not getting carried away by the 'thrill' or the risk of what he is talking about. There is a purpose to everything he raises; it is not being said simply to shock, but to entertain and to inform us.

The Big HOO-HAA! - Melbourne International Comedy Festival review

The Big HOO HAA! has been one of Melbourne' leading improv groups for eight years. In that time, the troupe has consistently sold out its regular weekly shows that are completely created from audience suggestions. For this year's Melbourne International Comedy Festival, the group returns for their usual late night improvised tomfoolery that pits The Bones against The Hearts in the fiercest battle that improv has ever seen.

The show has its two three-player teams - Greg Lavell, Anna Renzenbrink and Jaron Why in one team and Elly Squire, Isabella Valette and Luke Ryan in another, on the evening I attended - battling it out to see who will be victorious in this improv death match. The beauty of improv is that the audience and the improvisers never know what is going to transpire and it is simultaneously liberating and petrifying for both sides knowing that anything can happen on stage.

Down The Rabbit Hole review | Forum Theatre | Melbourne International Comedy Festival

She won the award for outstanding emerging performer at the 2017 New Zealand International Comedy Festival for her show Down The Rabbit Hole, and now Angella Dravid has come to Melbourne to share her unique story of how she got married to a man 30 years older than her and then ended up in prison with a criminal conviction. 

Dravid's life is incredible fodder for a comedian and you can easily picture them becoming very animated with the audience and really playing up the experience, however Dravid has decided to go with a completely opposite approach. Her delivery for the entire show is completely deadpan, and in some ways this works in her favour as it allows the audience to focus on the story and to imagine the situation as it is being described. Some clarity and further details on the events leading up to her arrest are needed though, as the way it is currently described leaves some ambiguity as to what actually occurred.