Rhys Mathewson: Time Trial
★★★1/2
The Chinese Museum is a functional live venue, and also a lavishly-presented museum that shows Chinese people have a very long history in Australia (visit Bendigo for more proof).
Rhys Mathewson is a bearded New Zealander, looking not unlike Peter Jackson. His show has a very simple premise: to do a performance precisely 50 minutes long. Mathewson doesn’t want to leave the audience wanting more, preferring, so he says, to give them exactly enough.Â
His material is often very funny, visiting a range of topics. One routine notes that Napoleon and the croissant, two quintessentially French entities, never met – the croissant came after Napoleon died. Mathewson notes how it’s impossible to say the word croissant without sounding pretentious and takes Napoleon’s famously short stature and turns it into a unit of measurement – “we’re now flying at an altitude of four and a half thousand Napoleons”.Â
Some of his cultural references fall a bit flat though; for instance, his skit regarding night windows at service stations, which are relatively rare in Melbourne – so a lot of the audience may never have been in the situation he describes.
He becomes more noticeably confident and risqué as the show goes on, so presumably that’s an analogy for his Australian career. Go give him an audience.
Rhys Mathewson: Time Travel will be performed at the Chinese Museum until 20 April as part of Melbourne International Comedy Festival (MICF 2025).
Science Friction: Fandom Wars
★★★★1/2
Science Friction’s Fandom Wars delivers exactly what you’d expect – geeks arguing about geek stuff, happily pulling the audience into the mix. Fans take their shows very seriously, as shown by films like 2010’s The People vs. George Lucas,1997’s Trekkies and the fact that YouTube armchair critics like Red Letter Media can have 1.5 million subscribers.Â
Co-hosts Damien Hatcher and Mick Barnes introduce the show’s structure before conducting a game regarding movie and TV fonts that reveals the high level of fandom/geekness in the audience (this reviewer included).
Then a representative of Marvel, in the form of Spider-Man, discusses all things MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe), including references that you either get or not (e.g. Spider-Ham). Barnes then discusses the universe of children’s books writer Enid Blyton, largely from the Famous Five series. While this seemed an odd choice for the opening night, it became clear that Blyton was a part of the lives of much of the audience.Â
Read: Comedy review: Ruby Wax, I’m Not As Well As I Thought I Was, Comedy Theatre
As there are only eight shows, each one will have different movie or TV franchises battling it out (the following evening was X-Men vs The X Files). If every show has an audience as knowledgeable and opinionated about the franchises being discussed as opening night’s show, then Fandom Wars comes highly recommended as a way to publicly pander your inner geek.Â
Science Friction: Fandom Wars will be performed at the Oxford Scholar until 20 April as part of Melbourne International Comedy Festival (MICF 2025).
