It’s Time To Laugh Again
Reflections on the opening week of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival
Every time I go check out some stand up I walk away thinking ‘yeah, I reckon I could do that’. Without fail. Knowing full well that in fact, no I cannot do that. I am not ‘ha ha’ funny (puts on Joe Pesci voice). I also don’t remember things well. Which is exactly the kind of mindset you need to reflect on the opening week of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival (buckle up).
It seems that comedy has evolved to occupy a duality, Schrodinger’s microphone so to speak. Both a safe space and celebratory platform for people and acts who previously didn’t have a voice, and remaining as the challenging provocative bleeding edge kind of work that can rip an audience in half, drop monocles in champagne glasses and get Twitter all aflame. It can be both an echo chamber and an army of jackhammers obliterating boundaries.
For better or for worse it has become rather difficult for me to be offended or angered by something. It is not lost on me that this leans into a privileged situation (not always a bad thing if used compassionately), but also a gradual refining of an outlook. Going in with as broad a perspective as I possibly can. I understand that not everyone can afford such luxuries and that it is to be expected and accepted. Can’t have everyone on the same frequency how boring would that be right? It is fair to ask though, how does comedy and comedians navigate what can sometimes be seen as an irrational and outraged state of sensitivity? Where vested parties from all sides attempt to be the gatekeepers of what can and can’t be said. Comedians have always felt like the rebels, challenging what society presents, and their voices are as important ever these days.
I went four nights in a row to open my festival experience. Littered with leftover cupcakes (there is not enough servers on the planet to unpack that), fickle audiences who seem to go in with the express purpose of not wanting to laugh, Michelle Wolf just utterly dominating her 11:15pm — yes, that’s a PM — show (which, yes, did sound like a good idea at the time Michelle), the rush of witnessing and then promptly forgetting acts (alzheimer’s come at me), messy preview work. I’m definitely not an expert but I do know that laughing is pretty good. We should all do it more. Also, let’s laugh at ourselves more. Makes you way more empathetic. Where am I going with this?
Oof, tough crowd. Anyway.
Watching comics continue to work out their stuff has become a recent enjoyment of mine. The messy and honest atmosphere really gels with me. Not minding a joke landing unevenly, or a bit quite super tight. We’re all in this together at this point. Over the course of the opening weekend, comics were still shaping their material, and the looseness of it allowed for an organic, laid back atmosphere instead of a more streamlined set. Not that I’m turned off by a pristine and sharp performance where the comic has all cylinders firing, but it’s fun to see a few wrinkles in their work, more readily open to happy accidents and random asides, leading them down a path they had no idea they were going to go.
Holding court at the ACMI Cube, Fern Brady was catapulted into the light. She pinballed through an avalanche of thoughts, crises and confessions. A millennial cry of rage/helplessness/shrug of the shoulders. A neat little video about a hamster going through the seven levels of hell showing how truly despicable we can be — ours is simply an amplification of the lives we find ourselves in, and we’re just trying to do the best we can to deal with it, even if we want to just scream into the void. Fern somehow manages to shape that wordless, endless scream into something cohesive and painfully relatable.
Over at the fancy Westin Hotel, Fin Taylor triumphed over a fickle sound setup to be like, confrontational but conversationally pleasant (?) exploring gender and sexuality and the hurricane of perspectives being shouted at people who are just trying to make sense of it all. Sometimes it’s just good to talk. On ever shorter chairs. He tackles the paradox that has exploded over the past few years of where a man’s place in this entire conversation really is. There is no easy answer, perhaps there is no answer at all, but Taylor is determined to dig as deep as possible and he crackles with an effortless streak of honesty and consideration. He expertly details the insane, all or nothing approach men of a certain ideology seem to have when it comes to understanding and accepting equality in its many forms.
And then Michelle Wolf came onto the Town Hall Lower stage and pummelled everyone despite immediately regretting to doing an 11:15pm show. Embracing and projecting all the flaws, bitterness, power, laser focused insight, selfishness and don’t-give-a-fuck-atude of who she is into a set that alternated between slow burn propulsion to blitzkrieg level missile of jokes that obliterates sensitivity and the ‘should we really be laughing at this’ crowd. The answer is yes, yes we should. The world continues to multiply in it’s batshit craziness, Wolf is just at the vanguard for us to follow. Peak Michelle is what the world needs right now. Wolf force! (Is that a thing? I don’t know, but I feel like it should be)
In the Supper Room of Town Hall, Mark Watson had to fight the Swanston Street buskers and phones so rudely ringing as he searched his mind as well as the audiences’ for empathy. His rambling, skittish delivery, careening from one topic to the next, turning on a dime to barrel down another direction before accidentally returning to the original point is cathartic, overwhelming and calming all at once. It was quite the tonal shift for me from watching Jordan Peele intense and baroque new film, Us that’s for sure. Our consciousness gets bombarded by so much these days that it’s hard to consider anyone but oneself. But Mark’s show, slyly titled ‘The Infinite Show’ is all about stripping back the layers of suspicion and defences that we put up for ourselves and accepting that we’re all a little bit shitty but then the world is a bit like that as a whole so what else can we do then try to get to know about each other a little more, yeah? Things can only get better by doing that.
In other words, see these acts (if you can). And then randomly choose five more that you haven’t heard of, and see them. The buffet is open, people!
For times, tickets and other fun things: https://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2019
