“Don’t worry, she’s really great,” whispers the ticket attendant as I line up outside the door of the Old Council Chamber at Trades Hall. It’s weirdly reassuring, especially coming from someone who I doubt is under any obligation to be throwing out positive reviews before a show.
And look, she’s not wrong – Bianka Ishmailovski really is great. The comedian, broadcaster and actor’s 2023 Melbourne International Comedy Festival show is called Like Godzilla, and it’s a candid, X-rated set about refusing to live the way society demands, defying expectations and “smashing the patriarchy”.
If you’re one of Ishmailovski’s 20,000 Instagram followers or a listener of her podcast Sad and Sexy, you’ll be familiar with her particular brand of straight-up, sassy comedy. Recently divorced, newly bisexual and ethically non-monogamous, Ishmailovski bursts onto the stage full of confidence, bejewelled water bottle in hand.
She’s keen to get the “goss”, which acts as a cheeky segue into her own piping hot tea: she recently “fucked an Olympian”. While she’s not naming names (the only hint we get is that the person was part of the Winter Olympics), in the cosy confines of the Old Council Chamber, Ishmailovski has the alluring ability to make us feel as though we’re all best friends being let in on a juicy secret.
There are tales aplenty of her erotic exploits, and if there’s a sexually conservative bone in your body, prepare to blush. Ishmailovski regales us with saucy snippets about getting down and dirty with a comedian (her reenactment of his dreadful signature move was spit-your-drink-out funny), the “admin” involved with being a sugar baby, being kink-shamed by a guy who wanted her to “use him as a toilet” and the horror of unintentionally going on a date with a nineteen-year-old who “learned about 9/11 in school”.
But it’s a graphic account about getting “intimate with a carrot” that really walks the tightrope of TMI, and will ensure you never look at the “odd bunch” (you know, the deformed veggies in the supermarket that go for cheap) in the same way. Oh, and the moment Ishmailovski realised that she and her mother had squirted during their own individual sexcapades, in “tandem”, if you will. “Like mother, like daughter”, she smirked.
There’s no denying there’s a lot of “depraved shit” packed into this one-hour sesh. But at the heart of this sexually liberating set filled with tidbits of her dating life, Ishamailovski’s core message is all about living your best life, despite what people may think – and that’s something we can get behind.
See Bianka Ishmailovski at Trades Hall until April 23. You can book tickets via the MICF website.
