A showcase of American comics – each of them performing at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival for the first time – Headliners opened with Jessica Kirson being her brash New York Jewish self, i.e. loud, rude and un-PC. For my money, she overdoes it: her show contains a lot of ‘me, me, me’ and chortling at her own jokes. There’s a lot of padding where she asks audience members about who they are and what they do without a great deal of it leading to proper gags, and her slightly aggressive shtick is wearying these days. Kirson is, however, a great mimic, she makes some lovely sharp points and uses her rubber face effectively; she just needs to stop patronising her audience and let her stories take the stage with less self-consciousness attached to them.
Next up was ‘homo-American’ James Adomian, making fun of his being gay – harder to do these days than in the past as being gay is no longer shocking, new or interesting in itself. He has a nice wit and a nice turn of phrase, although his show is heavily US-centric; his Lewis Black impression fell flat due to our lack of familiarity with the subject; on the other hand, unlike Kirson, Adomian didn’t assume we weren’t familiar with his references, which was refreshing. His spiel about New Yorkers and an imagined Disney mono-rail in NYC was cute. A fine mimic with a warm stage presence.
Lastly came Brendon Walsh who makes a ‘grand’ entrance, clowning on stage to the Game of Thrones theme (sadly the program doesn’t feature elsewhere in his routine; I was hoping for some piss-taking of the juggernaut series). Walsh tells stories about wearing false moustaches and playing silly buggers with his mate; he fantasises about making bakers ice idiotic messages on birthday cakes and wonders why it’s ok for women to have sex toys but not (straight) men. He’s a funny storyteller and ‘milks’ his eternally randy adolescent well (pun intended).
None of these performers were outstandingly original but their work is interesting in terms of amusing us with US stereotypes, and they were all good for a laugh.
Rating: 3 stars out of 5
Headliners
Melbourne Town Hall
28 March – 21 April
Melbourne International Comedy Festival
www.comedyfestival.com.au
27 March – 21 April
