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By Shane Murphy
Flo and Joan are sisters who don’t look anything alike from the UK. They do musical comedy – which as they say is not super cool – but they’re funny and very good at it. They came to notice via their 2016 Song and their show is more of the same, and sillier. With just a piano and a beautifully
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By Shane Murphy
Maria Bamford comes highly recommended. As an actor in the recent Arrested Development season she’s one of the cast of that effortlessly funny and weird show, so I was certain she could do no wrong. I was also excited to see her as she was the sole American comic I was seeing this MICF and and a break
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By Shane Murphy
After last year’s show, I was keen to see where David O’Doherty was at; one year older, wiser, maybe even funnier. Like last year, O’Doherty begins low-key. He wanders on stage as people are still finding seats and starts speaking almost before anyone has noticed this slightly disheveled guy is, in fact, the main act. The disarming charm and cruisy
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By Shane Murphy
Lazy Susan is the name of an English sketch comedy duo on their first trip to Melbourne. They’re bright, bubbly and hooked into the current mood with many references to male privilege and sexism – but handled with tongue firmly in cheek. The pair look deceptively like kids playing at home but this delightful look of amateurishness belies its planning and
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By Shane Murphy
Larry Dean is from Scotland. His accent is solidly, deliciously Glaswegian which always for me adds an element to the jokes; like Billy Connolly, I’m sure that at times it would not be quite as funny in an English voice. But he has a strong ability for mimicry and accents. Much of his show is nasal posh Aussie and
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By Shane Murphy
Seeing shows early in the MICF means many are still being worked on and tweaked. At his second show last week, Mark Watson mused about what did and didn’t work in his act the night before. He felt it was a shambolic; stuff that was working tonight barely drew a murmur last night. There are doubtless books on audience psychology and Watson uses
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By Shane Murphy
On her second trip to Melbourne, the near impenetrably accented Scot Fern Brady is mad and woke and not about to sit back and let things slide. A former stripper and teenage Goth she is angry – about the patriarchy, Brexit and the attitude that people have that bisexuality isn’t really a thing. Brady’s observational
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By Shane Murphy
Woman at War is a delightful and whimsical Icelandic movie with a plot that is more serious than expected from its billing as a “comedy/thriller/drama”. Halla is the eponymous ‘Mountain Woman’ who is an activist fighting a power company who are trying to finalise a mysterious deal with Chinese investors. In between sabotaging power lines and skilfully evading capture from the local
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By Shane Murphy
Tonight is a bit of a first for me, an opera and ballet in one piece performed as part of the Midsumma Festival. Composer Evan Lawson’s aim is to review the Orpheus myth by emphasising the relationship between Orpheus and his lover Calais, in contrast to the usual story that revolves around the tragic love tale
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By Shane Murphy
Sometimes the best gifts are the unexpected ones. I’d been wanting to get tickets to Dick Diver pre-Christmas shows at the Tote but they’d sold out within minutes. Resigned to missing out, I still kept my eyes peeled and happened to see a small link in a marketing email saying there was a Monday afternoon
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