If you don’t know Aurelia St Clair from their previous Melbourne International Comedy Festival shows, you’ll surely know her from her TikTok presence. St Clair specialises in biting (yet extremely accurate) critiques of Melbourne’s ‘hip’ inner north and all its quirks.
After her 2023 show Non-Dairy Presenting explored what qualities spiritually align you with either moo juice or plant milk drinkers, skewering suburban stereotypes in the process, this year’s show is all about St Clair’s mean girl origin story. “Are you ready to be mean for a minute?”, they ask, and the audience surely is.
What follows is a series of games for the crowd, musings on meanness and even a song on ukulele bouncing through the Chinese Museum’s Silk Room. St Clair asks us to play the ‘put a finger down’ challenge (a game that’s become a staple on TikTok, for those unfamiliar) to help us figure out whether or not we’re mean. From the looks of it, most of us are, at least a little.
Can I Be Mean For a Minute? digs into everything from St Clair’s experience growing up in the Jehovah’s Witness church (door-knocking is like exposure therapy for rejection, which sounds like solid preparation for stand-up), to being ‘gay married’ and non-binary.
A bit about the gender wage gap is especially on point – work is mean – as is the picture they paint of their ideal first date. A spirited game of ‘Am I the asshole?’ had one audience member fired up, which was handled with grace by St Clair.
St Clair’s set is entertaining, often enlightening and at times spot on. They punch up, not down (which is actually the subject of one of their well-received zingers) and keep things moving by swapping between bits and games. However, it felt like there was room to add more material into the show, which was on the shorter side.
Overall, St Clair has clearly built a keen eye for observation and a knack for being giggle-inducingly mean without ever crossing over to cruelty. Can I Be Mean For a Minute? is a set fit for a fun night out – especially if you’re a fan of their TikTok content – that could perhaps benefit from a hint more gusto to help the material razzle dazzle.
Aurelia St Clair might have beef with us for ranking High Street as the coolest street in the world, but we just wanna be frenemies, or maybe even mates.
