Meander is a great title for Geraldine Hickey’s latest show, though it wouldn’t be just for her of course. Because it’s an approach often utilised by stand-up comedians. Some of the very best will look and sound as if they are just riffing away, chatting on about whatever disparate topic or tangent pops into their heads, and then suddenly, bam, they’ll hit you with a flashback reference that makes you realise they knew exactly where they were going the whole time. Hannah Gadsby is a fine example of this.
Hickey’s material for this show is largely drawn from one high-profile experience she’s had recently but, while she returns to that subject intermittently, it’s not crafted with quite such a ‘gotcha!’ moment. Instead seeing a Geraldine Hickey show in 2025 is a lot like catching up with that old friend. The one you maybe only see once a year, but they have the best stories, and they’re the best at delivering them. There’s a warmth and a familiarity and you’re just very happy to sit back and let her do all the work.
In Meander, that translates to Hickey telling us of her time in the South African jungle as one of the recent participants in the reality TV show I’m a Celebrity, Get Me out of Here, and learning on the night this reviewer attended that the majority of her regular audience are, like this reviewer apparently, pathologically reality TV averse. There were a couple of punters who had seen the TV show and had come to the stand-up on the strength of it, but it seems the rest of us were gleefully in the dark. Which was actually a win/win for Hickey – she ends up with some new fans, but also plenty of unfamiliar material for those of us who hadn’t witnessed her stick her hand in a box with a big hairy spider or chew her way through a … actually, I’m not going to say that out loud, my gag reflex is way too easily triggered.
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Hickey’s other main material source for this show aligns even more strongly with the title – ineptitude when it comes to a sense of direction. Considering that in nearly every friendship/romance on the planet, there is one person who never knows where north is and the other who does and is insufferably smug about it, this is fertile and safe ground for Hickey. Safe like those comedy hands of hers. Reynaud’s disease notwithstanding… oh wait, that was last year’s show. What was that about meandering around and then coming back to an earlier punchline?
Tickets: $38-$52
Geraldine Hickey: Meander will be performed in the Fairfax Studio at Arts Centre Melbourne until 20 April 2025 as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival (MICF 2025).
