Do you have to be a certain age to really love Geraldine Hickey? Well, no that’s the wrong question, because clearly pretty much everybody loves her. What I should be asking is that old comedy chestnut about being relatable. Because over the past few years it feels as if Hickey has simply been taking us on the ageing journey with her. There was discovering the joy of gardening and the bane of agapanthus removal, travelling as a single middle-aged woman, love and marriage (a bit later on the traditional timescale because it was only legalised for the queer community in 2017, of course) and now she’s turned, like so many people of a certain age, to talk about health.
The gloves of the title are what she now needs to wear when struck by a particular severe bout of Raynaud’s disease – an unpleasant condition the symptoms of which include numb and freezing fingers and other extremities. Not necessarily great comedy fodder, you may think. But Hickey being Hickey, she always finds the funny spin – in fact the line about why as a queer woman she needs her fingers well warmed leads to one of the biggest guffaws of the night.
Always the consummate storyteller and the dependably loveable onstage presence, Hickey doesn’t disappoint, but sends the audience home basking in a warm and appreciative glow.
Read: Comedy review: Zoë Coombs Marr, Every Single Thing In My Whole Entire Life, Town Hall, MICF 2024
Tickets: $35-$48
Geraldine Hickey: Don’t Tease Me About My Gloves will be performed at in the Fairfax Studio at Arts Centre Melbourne until 21 April 2024 as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival (MICF 2024).
