‘High watermark of comedy’: One of the funniest shows of the festival

Daniel Herborn catches up with some of the biggest names at this year’s Sydney Comedy Festival.

Michelle Brasier: Reform
Factory Theatre, May 18
Until May 22
★★★★1/2

Following last year’s masterpiece, Average Bear, can’t have been easy. Melbournian Michelle Braiser had a lifetime of experiences to draw on for that work, but only a lockdown-plagued 12 months to write the follow-up. But with Reform, she’s fashioned a fitting sequel; this is another high watermark of deeply humane comedy.

It’s a true story that begins simply enough, as Brasier responds to a Gumtree ad selling a pilates reformer machine for $500.

Michelle Brasier is like a charisma bomb exploding on stage.Credit: Jim Lee

When the merchandise doesn’t turn up immediately, the young man selling it, Jacob, assures Brasier it’s a temporary delay. But the days become weeks with no delivery, and he starts explaining the situation with elaborate digressions on his parlous cashflow and worsening mental health. Brasier resists calling the police and instead reasons with and consoles her apparent scammer, becoming his unlikely friend and confidante. “I’m riddled with empathy,” she sighs. “It’s pathetic!”

What follows is an incredible tale that would beggar belief if there wasn’t proof projected on stage at regular intervals. It asks questions on how we should balance assertiveness with compassion, while delivering big laughs, charm (Brasier is like a charisma bomb exploding on stage), moments of genuine poignancy and unexpected twists right when it seems to be winding up.

The songs are a feature throughout, using every shade of Brasier’s sweet and soaring voice, and packed with pop hooks and sharp jokes. They’re deftly fleshed out by multi-instrumentalist Jordan White and Brasier’s partner, Tim Lancaster, on guitar - the latter also gamely plays the somewhat thankless role of Jacob.

Reform is an unpretentious piece of comedy as philosophy, an argument for doggedly thinking the best of people. It’s a wonderful achievement; not just one of the funniest shows of this festival season, but easily one of the kindest.

Emma Holland: Dreamer in the Mist
Enmore Theatre, May 13
Until May 15
★★★1/2

“This isn’t going to be a normal stand-up show,” Emma Holland deadpans to her audience. “I’m too
creative for that!” Faux arrogance aside, Dreamer in the Mist (the name is from a random title
generator) is a multifaceted audiovisual affair, combining her collage and video
editing talents with straight-faced absurdity.

Just a few years off an eye-catching turn at the RAW Comedy Grand Final, and now with regular
appearances on Have You Been Paying Attention? to her name, the Canberra native is one of the
most intriguing young comics around, carving out a distinctive niche rich in visual gags.

Emma Holland has carved out a distinctive comedic niche.Credit:

Holland’s art school background and love of B-grade pop culture often coalesce, leading to surreal
mash-ups of The Last Supper with VeggieTales, a contemporary reimagining of Belgian surrealist
René Magritte, and her pitch for a gritty reboot of That’s So Raven.

If all this seems quite a bit more left-field than, say, a Dave Hughes show, that’s because it is, though
the nasal-voiced one also makes a couple of appearances along the way. David Blaine and Victoria
Beckham are also recurring figures in a work that runs on its twisted internal logic.

There’s a bit of Aubrey Plaza in Holland’s comic DNA, like the knowingly forced smile and the
endearing undertone to her wicked persona. She admits that previous audiences have found her
crowd work too mean, but she has some nice interactions here. Her reaction to someone
interrupting a reading of her bizarre children’s book Sammy the Snake but confusing a rectangle for
a square is priceless.

Some stretches are more clever than hilarious, but the ambition and, yes, creativity are
unmistakable. You feel that Holland’s time is coming, and it will be very weird indeed.

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Wilogical
Enmore Theatre, May 6
★★★★1/2

Whatchu Talkin’ ’Bout Wil?
Enmore Theatre, May 8
★★★★1/2

“I’ve missed you guys so much,” Wil Anderson tells his audience during his entirely improvised Whatchu Talkin’ ’Bout Wil? It’s an unusually earnest interlude in this COVID-delayed return to the stage, but the feeling seems completely mutual.

Wil Anderson says he has missed his audience - and the feeling seems mutual.Credit:

His festival show, Wilogical (will he ever run out of puns on his name?), focuses on the anti-vaxxers that populate his new home of Mullumbimby. Moving at a breakneck pace, Anderson deconstructs each objection to the COVID vaccination he encountered, using hilariously inventive analogies to make a lucid argument for listening to the experts.

Unexpected pop culture references like a medical exemption written by Dr. Seuss and a Twisted Sister-themed vaccination ad, push it into comic nirvana. It doesn’t just settle for dunking on anti-vaxxers, however; there’s an empathetic undertone that most political comedy never manages.

If Wilogical is a fussed-over symphony, its off-the-cuff sister show is like a jam session that catches lightning in a bottle. It’s essentially Anderson asking audience members their name and job and riffing, so it’s really got no right to be this rambunctiously funny and packed with wordplay.

The interactions are razor-sharp but never mean-spirited. Anderson’s ability to turn small moments, like a woman craning to see a naval engineer he described as handsome, into delirious riffs is uncanny. He spins comic gold from a manspreading greenkeeper and even steers proceedings in a surprisingly poignant direction when he uncovers the story of a couple meeting in a Liquorland.

He misses an opportunity for a mic drop exit after an incredible callback tying together several audience members’ stories. But after a pair of shows where the audience and performer feel like long-lost lovers being reunited, we’ll forgive a long goodbye.

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Oliver Twist: Griot
Enmore Theatre, May 5
Until May 8
★★★1/2

A griot is a West African storyteller who keeps alive the oral tradition, be it through songs, poetry, or storytelling. For Rwandan-Australian Oliver Twist, comedy is his medium of choice. Sitting relaxed on a chair and spinning tales from his time in a Malawi refugee camp to his eventual resettlement in Ipswich, Queensland, it feels like a role he was born to play.

Oliver Twist has a winning habit of smiling widely at his moments of bemusement.

Griot is Twist’s first comedy festival show, but he’s got the assured stage presence of a veteran and the confidence to let his stories breathe. He’s understated but completely engaging, with a winning habit of smiling widely at his moments of bemusement.

Some material here, like a disturbing episode of having police question him for simply walking around his new Australian neighbourhood, is familiar from his stellar one-person play Jali, though this work generally eschews the darker corners of that story for a lighter, more episodic hour.

The strongest sections are inevitably the most closely autobiographical, ranging from awkward responses to people finding out he was born in Rwanda (Hotel Rwanda is apparently the go-to response) to lighter moments of cultural confusion, like the time he was invited to dinner and took the phrase “Bring a plate” literally. There’s a freshness here and a strong eye for a comically absurd detail.

Contrastingly, the more general observational stuff plays away from his strengths. Asides on cultural touchstones like Game of Thrones, Romeo and Juliet and Evil Angels are pleasant enough but feel overly familiar.

Griot lacks connective tissue at times, feeling more like unrelated anecdotes than a cohesive piece, but Twist emphatically belongs on stage. Jokes can always be punched up, and structure sharpened, but you can’t learn his kind of charisma.

Melanie Bracewell: Ooh La La
Enmore Theatre, April 30
★★★★

The last time Kiwi comic Melanie Bracewell played Sydney, her venue was a shipping container. This time around, she’s got her name up in lights (literally), she’s playing a 1600 seater and the queue to get in snakes into Enmore’s backstreets. It’s easy to see why - Ooh La La has punchlines for days.

Melanie Bracewell piles punchline upon punchline.

There’s an old comedy adage “don’t put a hat on a hat”, which roughly translates as advice to end a joke with a single punchline. Bracewell’s approach is more like that Key and Peele sketch where they one-up each with increasingly ridiculous headwear: her style is punchline on punchline, then another punchline. Then a final knockout punchline when you’re already reeling.

This joke density makes for a breezy hour. She’s retired the Jacinda Ardern impressions but gets consistent laughs with self-deprecating anecdotes like how her technique of using mnemonics to remember names went astray.

She can throw sass when she wants to (Typo is “Officeworks for basic bitches”, apparently) but mainly casts herself as an affable but uncool type bemused by her newfound mainstream popularity. When a showbiz manager asks her if she can source some magic mushrooms, she admits she finds even regular mushrooms too exotic. “Portobellos freak me out,” she says, aghast. “Too fleshy!“.

Her desire to be remembered gives the show a loose thematic structure, and clever callbacks string together winning bits about online reviews of eggs, a school journal entry about getting whacked by her sister and her grandfather’s farcical attempt to pass his eye test.

The most interesting material, however, covers her boyfriend’s attempts to get a diagnosis for his short-term memory loss. It’s perhaps not the most obvious comedic goldmine, but, as ever, Bracewell finds punchlines (and then more punchlines) at every turn.

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David O’Doherty: Whoa is Me
Enmore Theatre, April 26
★★★★

The enduring appeal of Irishman David O’Doherty might be difficult to convey to the unconverted. Here is a musical comedian that can’t really sing and can’t really play his keyboard. But what an absolute delight an hour with him is.

Not a dour figure at the best of times, O’Doherty is positively beaming tonight, as he’s just come out of a COVID lockdown that scuppered the end of his Melbourne festival run.

He begins with series of small but life-affirming moments: falling asleep on a train but waking up right at your stop, your printer wheezing for life but somehow limping to the last page. These vignettes are delivered with unadulterated enthusiasm and underscored by chintzy Casio soundscapes; it’s a heady, heartwarming brew.

David O’Doherty seems always to be able to look on the bright side.

His phrase-turning is often exquisite, whether injecting lovely flashes of lyricism into the everyday, sending his stories on surreal detours or taking self-deprecating potshots at his career, like the time his tour unwittingly followed a psychic venue to venue.

The man’s had a rough couple of years. On top of you-know-what, he had a long-term relationship end, and he had to move back in with his infuriatingly loved-up (and amusingly tech-phobic) parents. No wonder he became so attached to “two-can Tuesday” lockdown meet-ups that he almost perished one arctic night.

That tale, and others, could end in woe. Through sheer force of personality, however, O’Doherty inevitably locates some strand of optimism in each misadventure. Even an eye-watering medical procedure has a comic lesson in his buoyant worldview.

The night ends with a classic older song about mice infestation, or does it? He invites the entire thousand-strong audience for a pint at a nearby pub. Judging by the warm response to his every tale, the old charmer could have drank for free all night.

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