Sea of bright yellow flags and banners trumpeting the arrival of the very much-anticipated Melbourne International Comedy Festival 2016 is colonizing various parts of the city.
Being
the 3rd largest international comedy festival in the world, the city
of Melbourne will be entertained by over 500 shows by 2000 performers over 4
weeks in March and April.
I
like watching a stand-up comedy show once in a while, but to say I am a big fan
of such trend of performances will be a lie.
My
personal opinion: the comedy stage has slowly turned into a forum for the
coarsest of language, a platform for uncontrolled and liberated speech of
sensitive and offending topics. Funny means being grumpy and intolerance of
anything different from yourself; a good laugh means poking fun at the
imbecilic view of another; a top notch comedian must have the polished skill to
mock an accent of a different race. Hilarity is synonymous to an overflowing indulgent
of the crudest sexual and racial theme jokes. The use of a range of foul words has
become an essential ingredient of a successful and loveable performance.
Granted,
watching a comedy show is an entirely different experience from watching a
Steven Spielberg’s film on war. So if you are looking for a spiritual
enlightenment or on a quest for life motivations, you have come to a wrong
theatre house. If you are unable to bear the jokes of those witty comedians’
limitless and unrestrained creativity, then walk away please. We have better
audiences!
Don’t
get me wrong. I have my utmost respect to the comedians. It is a challenging
job to entertain yet at the same time, not to fall into the self-made trap of
sounding stupid or classless. It needs huge courage to crack a joke, and
believe that it will bring down a house with raucous and spontaneous laughter.
It needs a strong mindset and a positive personality to keep a comedian floated
above the waves of uninvited pressures.
Being
such an unpopular, hard-to-be-pleased and selective comedy-show non-fan, it is
not difficult for me to come out with my two personal favourites (since I don’t
have many to start with). Tastes vary, after all.
1. Nina Conti
It
is hard not to love Nina Conti. She is a spectacularly talented ventriloquist.
Her usual stunt involves strapping a comical half-mask onto her selected
audience’s face, expertly manipulating her human dummy’s mouth up and down at
arm’s length, and creating an entirely new personality out of the
cartoonish-looking dummy with hilariously exaggerated voice. Nina picks up on
the dummy’s body language instantaneously, develops clever conversation without
displaying much effort, and invents riotously funny plot with her amazing
voice-throwing skill.
Nina
is full of unpredictable surprises, and it is difficult not to be impressed by
her quick wittedness.
Nina
will be performing at the Arts Centre Melbourne from 29 March 2016 to 10 April
2016. Click here to find out more.
2. Tegan Higginbotham
The
show is an unexpected delight.
Tegan’s
stand-up show, The City of Love, was a one-hour recap of the personal journey
of a small town Dandenong girl realizing her childhood dreams. A great storyteller,
Tegan led the audiences into her hilarious and struggling excursions of
achieving her life-long goals: getting married and have kids by the age of 25,
be an action movie star, and to fall in love in the romantic city of Paris. The
hilarity of the show revolves around her youthful silliness and innocence in
trying to have her dreams come true. The
entire performance was charming, heart-warming, cheeky, and funny in a very
sweet way. I had a great time watching the show.
Tegan
is performing at the Greek Centre from 24 March 2016 to 3 April 2016. Click
here to find out more.
You
can check out the (horrendously long) list of events from the official website
here.
There
are also some family friendly, free performances happening at the Federation Square
and City Square on a daily basis (save Monday) until 17 April 2016. Check out
the link here for more information.
I
hope you have a great laugh, and let me know if you have a favourite comedian
that you wouldn’t mind recommending to me!
No comments:
Post a Comment