Is there anything Kitty Flanagan can’t do? Aside from her glittering stand-up career, Flanagan has written three books and acted in both film and television roles – her most recent, and perhaps most notable, as the titular character in ABC’s Fisk. And so it’s no surprise she’s greeted with rapturous applause on a gloomy Sunday afternoon at the Athenaeum Theatre, for what is her seventh appearance at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
As it seems to be part of the official T&C's for taking part in this year’s festival, Flanagan begins by discussing the good ol’ pandemic. She finally made the permanent move to Melbourne in early 2020, and the rest is, well, history. It does lead to an amusing conversation on the age-old Melbourne versus Sydney debate, which is always a crowd-pleaser – especially when comments like “Sydney people only care about themselves” are thrown around.
Flanagan recently had a health scare – the type that makes you “reconsider whether you should buy the green bananas because maybe you’ve only got weeks to live”. Thankfully, she’s still alive and well to tell the tale of just how mortifying those backless hospital gowns can be, which somehow leads to a bit about pubic hair, and how women have been scammed into unholy levels of maintenance that have caused them to “rip out the whole backyard and replace it with a Japanese garden – bare with nothing but a few pebbles”.
There’s an underlying theme of mortality and growing old in Flanagan’s set, highlighted in the sections where she talks about her mother, who is aware “90 per cent of the time”. The other 10 per cent? That’s when “Coco the monkey is in charge”, and she goes off on random tangents, leaving Flanagan feeling like she’s Jane Goodall observing a primate in the wild.
There’s a lot to dig for in this particular comedy mine, with laughs aplenty rolling in thick and fast when Flanagan mentions how old people only like their coffee “piping hot” or when she identifies that there are only two demographics who appreciate the iPad: “toddlers and seniors”. In a crowd that skewed on the older side, Flanagan’s impersonation of an elderly person overfeeding their dog is met with both feigned shock and knowing chuckles.
A musical interlude comes in the form of a sweet duet with her sister Penny, doubling as a loving ode to the humble underpants. Flanagan can (surprisingly) hold a lovely tune, and there’s a very high chance you’ll have the chorus of “my big underpants, my great underpants” stuck in your head long after you depart the theatre.
The second half of the show is just as loaded with witty, punchy insights into ordinary life – think gags about filming people at the dog park who don’t pick up their pooch’s poo, mandatory vasectomies (“nothing good comes from wizardry old jizz”) and how “if you’re ordering rum and raisin ice cream, it’s time to get your affairs in order”.
Flanagan has the ability to spin magic from the mundane, and if you need proof this sovereign of sarcasm and snappy comebacks really can do it all, this is the show for you.
See Kitty Flanagan at the Athenaeum Theatre until April 23. You can book tickets via the MICF website.
