Headliners

Headliners is a great way to get value for money, with four American stand-ups in one sitting. But sometimes quantity over quality is a bad choice and this isn’t a gig I particularly enjoyed.

The four comedians for the first stretch of Headliners (a second group of performers take over half way through the festival) were: Jen Kirkman, Dave Hill, Brooke Van Poppelen and Seaton Smith, in that order.

Jen Kirkman took far too long to warm up in a short set. Once she got going, she was actually pretty funny, throwing around some genuinely belly-laugh inducing gags, but it felt like we only got half of what we came for.

Dave Hill then strolled onto the stage in his smoking jacket and cravat and kicked things off with a slew of bizarre and unrelated one-liners, all of which hit their mark beautifully. He then progressed into slightly more classic, albeit strange, story-telling. His memories of toilets in Japan was the highlight, albeit somewhat troubling.

The set from Brooke Van Poppelen was slow. There were some laughs, but they were few and far between. It was also fairly predictable content (Think: I’m single and I live in New York, but it’s not like Sex In The City). Her material also didn’t travel exceptionally well, with lots of references that didn’t really resonate with a local audience, like what it’s like to heat a burrito in an oven instead of a microwave.

Seaton Smith had the toughest job of the night dragging the crowd back after Van Peppelen’s set and he did a fantastic job, with a seriously high energy kick-off that woke everyone up. It didn’t help that the show started 20 minutes late and finished 40 minutes after schedule. He had some great localised gags and even got an impromptu lesson on Australian politics from the audience. But he stayed on stage a little too long and towards the end started to forget his punchlines and lose track of his train of thought. It was shame because otherwise, his was a great set.