Comedy Festival 2018: Claire Hooper too nice to be feeling All The Rage ★★

A VETERAN act flails about with thin material and a lot of padding in an overlong, threadbare show that needs more energy, content and, well, laughs.

A DESTRUCTIVE darkness dwells deep within Claire Hooper and, apparently, she’s eager to share with us the source of the anger she’s been struggling with for ages. Yet you don’t feel there’s ever been much of an inner demon given the flighty, affable manner Cooper adopts in this mild, disappointing show.

Her issue, she explains, is that she has an all-but-uncontrollable penchant for smashing things, a hotel room being the most notable recent victim of her inner-Hulk.

Claire Hooper in All The Rage.

Her long-suffering husband suggested she talk to somebody about it, but rather than seek professional therapy Cooper decided, like many comedians, to work through her problems via comedy by putting on a show. A perfectly sound strategy, no doubt, but the flaccid result here suggests that going to therapy first might have been a better idea.

LANO AND WOODLEY MAKE HIGH-FLYING RETURN

ALEX EDELMAN: LIFTING THE LID ON MODERN-DAY NAZIS

For somebody trying to sell the premise that they are smash-a-holics Hooper simply sounds way too content and likeable to pull it off. There’s no threat or edge to her performance, no sense that she is a real danger to anything or anyone. She might talk the talk about being a live wire yet at no stage do you believe she could hurt a fly, let alone smash one.

Bluntly, there’s not enough material here to sustain an hour, with a lot of stuff sounding suspiciously like padding. For instance, we get an extended passage about garage door repairs and having a tradesman in the house. Yawn. It’s one of many bits in the routine that could have benefited from a long session with a red pen.

ARJ BARKER FED UP WITH USELESS LIFE HACKS

GERALDINE HICKEY: STAND UP TO YOUR GREATEST FEARS

Audience reaction on the night was tepid. There were plenty of smiles, sure, and waves of titters regularly swept through the packed Portico Room, though some were faint indeed. The show is simply light on laughs.

As for the self-prescribed catharsis-through-comedy the show was meant to provide Cooper, there’s too little sense there was much need for it.

Claire Hooper, All The Rage

Melbourne Town Hall, cnr Collins and Swanston sts, until April 22.

comedyfestival.com.au