Comedy Festival 2018: Mel Buttle gives a boisterous account of her rescue pooch in Dog Bitch ★★★

A BELOVED festival fixture presents a boisterous, touching account of her love for a rescue dog that is so sweet and funny you can already see the movie poster.

THOSE fortunate enough to fall snugly into that part of the Venn diagram where their love of Mel Buttle overlaps with their love of dogs are in for plenty of nutritious treats as she explains her deep affection for one particular pooch.

Sprinting out of the gate with a crowd-snaring put-down of Melbourne’s coffee culture, this pleasantly potty-mouthed firebrand from Brisbane speed-walks us through the blossoming of her relationship with Ruby, a mutt she picked up from the RSPCA for $50.

Far from being a charitable act, Buttle bought the dog to stop her overly sensitive girlfriend — a volunteer worker who’d seen Ruby’s sale price fall ever south — from blubbing to death over Ruby’s fate.

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Her smooth delivery allowing her to bounce back quickly from the occasional dud line, Buttle animates her set with a bubbly physicality that suggests her routine could be transcribed into a ready-to-shoot screenplay.

A prime example comes as she vividly recounts the time she went pig-hunting with Ruby. It’s like Wake in Fright, but with laughs and more blood. Yet, is it true?, Buttle teases the audience of about 50, neatly arrayed in the front half of the Portico Room. Could be, she hints with another funny gesture.

Mel Buttle speed-walks us through the blossoming of her relationship with Ruby, a mutt she picked up from the RSPCA for $50 in Dog Bitch.

Incidentally, the laughs Buttle rouses with her cavorting fuels this reviewer’s long-standing theory that women are funnier at physical comedy than men. On that score, Buttle has the added advantage of an impressive range of voices and noises covering everything from posh women to ocker blokes to dogs who think they can bark.

For an hour-long show there’s a surprisingly limited number of digressions, with most of her bits neatly folding back into her Ruby story.

With much of her research conducted while either professionally walking dogs or down at the dog park with Ruby, Buttle delights in expounding on dog owner types and on a thing called “dog snobbery”, a fascinating syndrome unfamiliar to non-dog people.

Comedian Mel Buttle walks Buddy, Charlie and Cliff in Queen Victoria Gardens. Picture: Ian Currie.

As a service to her art, Buttle avoids setting the comedy clock back 30 years by doing any jokes about the differences between cats and dogs. Kudos to her for not striking such a big, obvious gong. The closest she goes is pointing out how dog people have better stories to tell than cat people. And that dog people get out of the house a lot more.

The main stand-alone riffs in the show involve her divorced parents and their latter-life habits, though Buttle reserves special venom for her dad’s new lady friend. It’s the show’s only misstep.

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It’s fairly funny, but it’s a bit of dirty laundry that sticks out so much it jars. Being nasty for the sake of comedy is one thing; being nasty for its own sake is aiming low indeed. Buttle is better than that and she might want to rethink what function it serves as part of the show.

As she glides through her set, bubbling beneath the whole routine is, well, why? Why the love? What motivated her to regard dogs so highly, especially given how she’s never really gotten on with them?

This Buttle saves for a beautifully crafted finale, a fitting end to a slick show that proves how the worth of a dog can’t be judged by its discounted price tag.

Mel Buttle, Dog Bitch

Melbourne Town Hall, corner Swanston and Collin Streets, until April 22.

comedyfestival.com.au