Melbourne International Comedy Festival 2024 reviews

Having had the pleasure of catching Mel O’Brien and Samantha Andrews’ High Pony at last year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival (a completely unhinged hour of queer energy and catchy musical bops), I returned once again to the Toff in Town, fully prepared for whatever insane magic this powerhouse pair has cooked up. And with The Platonic Human Centipede, it’s clear they didn’t come to play it safe.

The opening number quickly sets the tone for the evening, taking things from zero to 100 real quick. ‘Eat My Ass’ is a nod to the show title’s filmic inspiration and features the instantly quotable lyrics: “Eat my ass, not like yum but more like I love you”. Add a choreographed high-kick moment, and there’s not a person in the room who isn’t going feral for these two. 

The show's overarching theme is unsung duos of the modern world – we’re talking Bart and Lisa Simpson, Willy Wonka and Charlie Bucket, and Santa Claus and Mrs Claus. The latter feature in a hilarious couples therapy skit that unpacks their love languages. Spoiler alert: ol’ Saint Nick is a words of affirmation guy.

But it’s an especially cheeky duet starring Mel and Sam as Robert and Bindi Irwin singing to their dearly departed father up in heaven (RIP) that elicits a can’t-believe-they-went-there response from the shrieking faux-horrified audience. Oh, they went there alright, and we’re all the better off for hearing them belt out “Is it slay? Do they play The Crocodile Hunter on Blu-Ray?” in perfect unison.

Other musical moments touch on all the important topics plaguing twentysomethings across the country right now, including sharehouse life (“every sharehouse has a cat that hates a pat”), polyamory and just wanting to be a soft girl who cries into her Stanley Cup, drives a hatchback Mazda and wears bows. Amen to that. 

But there’s a sweetness to this set that balances out the chaos, courtesy of Mel and Sam’s dads who provide completely inaccurate introductions to each new song or segment via voice recordings. An honourable mention must be made to Paul O’Brien (Mel’s father) for saying the show is about “a very friendly millipede”.

As they say at the start of ‘Anthem for the Soft Girl’, 2024 is undoubtedly a “year for the girlies”. And for those of us who worship at the glittering altar of Mel and Sam, we couldn’t agree more. These two remain a force to be reckoned with, and long may their whip-smart lyrics, spot-on comedic instincts and matching swishy parachute pants reign.

Chasing more comedic highs? Check out who else is performing at the 2024 Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

It’s 2am and you’ve found yourself in an incoherent conversation with a high-energy himbo and his hot lady muse in the club smokers. They’re not a couple, and yet they keep making out in between offering you more of whatever it is they’re on. You can’t find your friends, and now you’re considering going home with them to explore a new life of non-monogamy.

That’s what going to see Hot Department is like. A wild party of fast quips, chaotic dance numbers and horniness. It’s not for the faint-of-heart, but it is for those who would rather go big than go home. 

From the outset, Honor Wolff and Patrick Durnan Silva explode with energy. They’re dancing like nobody's watching, except it’s a packed-out audience at the Malthouse Theatre. This impeccable duo knows their audience very well –  they’ve perfectly cultivated a style of comedy for the theatrical Inner North queer community. They walk, so a new breed of fast-paced and ultra-camp comedians can run. 

Early on the duo reveals that they are, unsurprisingly, theatre kids, meeting at acting school before deciding to venture into comedy. This explains the triple-threat nature of Durnan Silva and Wolff — who can not only make you giggle, but can also come up with sharp song lyrics and even tap-dance. 

Stand up comedians should watch out, because Hot Department relies on more than just witty observations. They will kill you with laughter, then tap-dance on your grave.

It’s refreshing to see sketch comedy made for a younger and chronically online audience. Brace yourself for a TikTok-esque Kiera Knightley impression and a very sapphic Barbie sketch, which are just some of the memeable highlights to look forward to. 

In another memorable moment, the duo play a couple who tries to spice things up by pretending to be mice. Within minutes, the cuteness of the mouse sketch has dissipated — evolving into extreme levels of horndog and very little mouse. With so many fast and fun sketches, a circle back moment or cleverly interwoven theme would’ve really brought this show to new heights. 

What Hot Department does best is turn any moment into something sexy and erotic. They will seamlessly turn you on, and terrify you in the span of 30 seconds or less. They aren’t afraid of bringing the audience in on the fun either, forcing two men to fight over Honor’s honour by using some carefully crafted cue cards. 

Now we won’t spoil the ending, but be prepared to see Barbie in a whole new light — plus a leotard that leaves very little to the imagination. It was the perfect conclusion to an unhinged show of dancing incoherent madness. The stars of Hot Department are a power couple in the smokers you’ll never forget. 

Hot Department is playing at the Malthouse's Beckett Theatre until Sunday, April 21. Tickets are available here.

Want more? Check out who else is performing at the 2024 Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

Darby James had an interesting lockdown. Like most of us, he scrolled to the ends of the internet and what he found there was an ad… for a sperm donation clinic. The ad took hold in his brain and led him down the path of giving away his baby batter, which previously hadn’t had much use – given he’s a cis gay man. So of course, he’s written a cabaret about the process of donation, and the moral quandaries that come with it, that’s now running the full duration of this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

James’s writing and songs are full of puns and quaint rhyming schemes, turning the clinical process of filling out online forms, going to various appointments and meditating on the ethical dilemma presented by having children into a musical adventure – complete with sea shanties and vulnerable ballads. The music is very much steeped in the musical theatre tradition, with elements of modern pop mixed in (particularly in the donation clinic that plays nothing but ’80s hits). There are plenty of opportunities for cleverness and James attempts to squeeze as much as he can out of the source material.

The highlights of the show include ‘If I Were A Dad’, a delightful song about the kind of parent a gay man might become, and the final number in which he writes a letter to his potential future child. These songs are written with a concrete tenderness that imagines what the future of the sperm might look like, and crucially how complicated the feelings about this future can become. Other numbers sometimes drift into shallower territory, and the hesitation to give any answer for the children-creating question leaves us wanting a little more… steering. 

Set and costume by Betty Auhl dresses James as a navy-striped, white capped seaman (geddit), standing atop his small circular rug made from rope surrounded by various bottles and other rope sculptures. The set becomes somewhat restrictive over the 60-minute run time, particularly on the Malthouse Bagging Room stage, giving both James and director Casey Gould not much opportunity for movement outside of the small circle. This leads to some awkward choices that make it difficult for James to reach through the fourth wall and effectively interact with the audience. 

Overall, Little Squirt is a unique musical meditation on the experience of thinking about our legacy and how we can ethically continue to exist on this planet. Unfortunately it doesn’t quite manage to move too much outside of the boundaries it creates for itself, both in terms of movement and content.

Little Squirt is playing at the Malthouse until April 21, with tickets starting from $28. Tickets are available via the Comedy Festival website.

Want more? Check out who else is performing at the 2024 Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

Anne Edmonds is one of the country's most fearless and revered stand-up comedians. She is no stranger to accolades, and they include five Most Outstanding Show Award nominations, the Director’s Choice and the peer-voted Piece Of Wood Award at Melbourne International Comedy Festival as well as a Best Comedy Performer nomination at the Helpmann Awards. Now, she's bringing her acclaimed show Why Is My Bag All Wet back for another season for the 2024 edition of MICF. Keep reading for our 2023 review.

Is there anything better, more life-affirming even, than seeing a comedian who is at the absolute top of their game? After seeing Anne Edmonds in full flight at the Comedy Theatre as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, probably not.

The much-loved entertainer (perhaps best known for her alter ego, the slightly unhinged, sarong-wearing Helen Bidou) dances on stage with a swagger and a smile that is instantly infectious. She’s already laughing at the fact that so many of us would be here at 4pm on a Saturday arvo: “Ooh, the matinee crowd”. 

There’s the obligatory warm-up chat that touches on Covid (“did you know there are still anti-vaxxers around – it’s cute!”), before she launches into the main premise of her show: why is her bag all wet? Thanks to a show of hands, it’s clear this is a universally shared phenomenon, and Edmonds labels the few who have never had the misfortune of a leaky water bottle dripping in their bag as “sociopaths” who must be in cahoots with Frank Green.

From there, Edmonds dives into her life as an older mum (or a late-in-life mum aka a LILM, which she repeats over and over in an increasingly hysterical voice) and jokes about “trapping” her partner – fellow comedian and Welshman Lloyd Langford – in the country during the pandemic, then conveniently falling pregnant. 

The trials and tribulations of motherhood are an ongoing theme across the hour-long set, with Edmonds regaling us with a horror story about destroying her daughter Gwen’s birth certificate via – you guessed it – a leaky water bottle in her bag. She also talks about filling Gwen’s head with parental propaganda (“you’ve got the hottest mum in Australia”), close mother-daughter relationships giving her the ick (“no thank you, not for me”) and the intoxicating allure of the indoor play centre – where the inevitable bout of gastro is worth it just to score “ten minutes of beautiful, uninterrupted scrolling”.

But it’s when Edmonds (quite literally) throws herself into more physical skits or adopts different personas that she transcends from highly amusing to hilariously deranged in the best way possible. Her reenactment of one of her favourite pastimes – “sliding down the wall crying” – hits a little too close to home for many in the crowd, who by this stage are cry-laughing at its accuracy. Then a story about the time she travelled to Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival and needed to buy a high chair off Facebook Marketplace, only to be confronted by a hag-like Scottish woman screaming, “I canae find the tray” is enough to keep those waterworks flowing.

But the show reaches its crescendo when Edmonds divulges the time she shit her pants (yes, really) in a two-storey Coles Local. The unfortunate tale is a gold medal-worthy finish by any standards. Still, after an audience member dares question Edmonds’ claim that only a city like Sydney would be home to a split-level supermarket, she savagely shut him down by yelling, “don’t mansplain Coles to me”. Chef’s kiss, no notes – let that be a lesson for hecklers.

The juxtaposition of Edmonds is intriguing: she’s as relatable as she is outrageous, and her particular brand of comedy swings from almost sincere to full-blown acts of insanity. But above all, she’s just really, really funny – what more could you want than that?

Love to laugh? Check out these regular comedy nights in Melbourne.

Reuben Kaye is bringing his loose late-night show back to Forum Melbourne for two queer, messy, fast and furious nights. We went along to one of last year's shows at the same venue – keep reading for our 2023 review of The Kaye Hole.

An irresistible cocktail of spicy, sweet and sexy, Reuben Kaye’s variety extravaganza, The Kaye Hole, had us addicted from the first hit. We were welcomed into the holy church of Reuben Kaye with open arms and naked butts. It was a delayed service, with the audience on the edge of their seats, frothing with anticipation. However, we all know good things come to those who wait (and that we queer folk are fashionably never on time). 

Smiling with a devilish grin, Kaye was hauled onto the Forum stage by “the tail of Satan”. The tail, in this instance, was a rope hooked under a man’s penis, and not the tail tucked into the back of Posie Parker’s pants. Dressed head-to-toe in a ravishing red, Kaye extended the official welcome to “his hole” with a sinfully-charged rendition of 'Celebrity Skin', met with symphonic praise. 

Unlike many religious/cult leaders, Kaye’s moments were laced with candid self-awareness. Addressing his recent controversial appearance on The Project, he lamented that his longing for an illustrious television career was cut short. He cooed with exposed chapless cheeks, “baby did a boo boo”, and shamed the media for “crucifying a Jew this publicly so close to Easter”. 

The Kaye Hole was a variety show true to its name, as all the acts were deliciously ripe with diversity. The first cab off the rank was the comedian Michelle Brasier. In her performance of the 4 Non-Blonde’s classic, “What’s Up”, her vocals were powerful, and her adlibs playful.

The comic Jay Wymarra was then pulled in on a kiddie’s tricycle by “two white sluts” and referred to Kaye as the world’s “gayest reptile”, perhaps explaining his need to live under bright stage lights. Touching upon his Torres Strait Islander heritage throughout, Mymarra strummed out a fabulous rendition of 'I Wan’na Be Like You' from the Jungle Book, ukulele in hand and affectations aplenty. 

The guest appearances didn’t stop there. Dressed as a scantily clad superhero, Bettie Bombshell showed she is as flexible as many inner-north ‘vegans’ and shimmied not only titty tassels but tooshie tassels too. Afterwards, Malia Walsh mimed a performance piece to Nick Cave’s ‘Red Right Hand’, splattering a white dress in tomato sauce in her comical take on menstrual mayhem.

Next up, was it a bird? Was it a plane? Was it one of Kaye’s lost bags? No, it was the MICF best show nominee. Jordan Gray (read our five-star review here). Gray gave us a taster of her electric show with an original song that sparked a constant current of laughter. 

After being stunned into silence by the aerialist Leopold Pentland’s gravity-defying act, we snapped, crackled and popped into a frenzy over an X-rated performance to ‘Popcorn.’ The hula hooper spurted popcorn like artillery from her head before she lathered up her naked body with butter and plucked a SAXA salt shaker from her netherregions – hmm, salty and sweet. 

It was a show with golden nuggets of hilarity that, in Kaye’s own terms, could be misunderstood by those unfamiliar with arsehole politics. But listen up octogenarians, the great news is, you’re never too old to learn. In and amongst all the sordid sin, Kaye left us with a very important message. “Go and see art from people that don’t look like you and don’t think like you,” he said. 

In a less important message, I will be ordering bags galore and horses to boot because I never want to crawl out of this Kaye Hole.

Want to kick-on afterwards? Check out the best nightclubs in Melbourne.

In her first stand-up hour since 2018, Celia Pacquola serves up a hilarious whirlwind tour of the past five years: lockdowns, a new relationship, a haunted house, butt-masks (yes, things got weird during covid), and the arrival of her daughter. With the regal Comedy Theatre in Melbourne as her backdrop, Pacquola kicks off with a “you’re welcome” for the early 6.30pm start time; she’s in her 40s now and in genial Celia fashion, appreciates that people prefer to be in pyjamas by 9pm.  

The show picks up from where her 2018 set (All Talk) left off, with a palpable sense of urgency as Pacquola swiftly revisits the #MeToo movement and her personal mental health issues – both thankfully now “solved.” She rewinds to 2020, a year that Pacquola anticipated as “her year,” only to be marked by the global pandemic and, in her opinion, an equally newsworthy story: the year she won Dancing with the Stars. Thus begins the prelude of her adventures as a self-proclaimed “fun mum.” 

Here, Pacquola flaunts her trademark candour and quirkiness, regaling the crowd with flawed logic like a kicking system that dictates her meat consumption and the finding and returning of a lost cat. The decisively delirious tone of the set underscores her ill-preparedness for navigating parent groups, arguments with her smart home, and the moral quandaries of parenting.

There’s a begrudging yet good-humoured intertwining of Pacquola’s dismissal from Bluey, having been initially offered the role of Chilli, now famously voiced by Melanie Zanetti, prompting raucous laughter from the audience. Pacquola’s adept interaction with her audience arrives in all of the right places with jests about “walk outs” following a series of birthing anecdotes, and the allocation of laugh-based gold stars.

While the energy and laughs taper towards the end, Pacquola reels the audience back in with clever callbacks to earlier jokes. The climax arrives with a comical showdown against Google Home, set to Vengaboys’ ‘Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom!!’ This leads to a protracted conclusion where Pacquola shares the difficulty of wrapping this particular set, ultimately offering a wholesome reflection on beginnings rather than endings. Despite the slightly clumsy finale, a couple of surprises in the ‘post-credits’ almost make up for it.  

Pacquola effortlessly blends freudenfreude, self-deprecating silliness, and genuine warmth (despite what the Bluey team said), to create an intimacy hard to achieve in large venues. I’m As Surprised as You Are truly feels like a long overdue catch-up with friends – a delightful pre-dinner treat that will keep you smiling until bedtime. 

I'm As Surprised As You Are is playing at the Comedy Theatre until April 7 – find out more and get tickets here.

Want more? Check out who else is performing at the 2024 Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

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.  

Want more? Check out who else is performing at the 2024 Melbourne International Comedy Festival.