What Did She Think?

What: Personal When: 24 - 29 April 2018 Where: Arts House Created and performed by: Jodee Mundy Directed by: Merophie Carr Design by: Jen Hector Sound by: Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey Video by: Rhian Hinkley Jodee Mundy - photo by Bryony Jackson The world is changing. Australia is changing. One of the great aspirations of our emerging NDIS is to evolve into a society which allows people with disability to live their lives as fully and independently as a human being. This means working and playing. This means dreaming and achieving. This means every space is a space for everybody. In Personal at Arts House Jodee Mundy shows us how to make the stage and audience spaces just such a world. Whilst not having a disability herself, Mundy grew up as the only hearing person in a family of five. Even now, days later, I have trouble getting my head around the extraordinariness of growing up with parents and two brothers who can't hear. Mundy tells us she did not even real

What: Alexis Dubus Versus The World When: 10 - 22 April 2018 Where: Hairy Little Sister Created and performed by: Alexis Dubus Alexis Dubus Alexis Dubus is a very funny man. He is a man of many talents, many accents and many words and we get the exquisite and unusual experience of being able to enjoy a great deal of them because he has brought us two very funny shows this Comedy Festival season. My last review was of his hilarious alter ego's show - Marcel Lucont's Whine List and here I am about to regale you with the intelligent humour of his spoken word routine called Alexis Dubus Versus The World playing at Hairy Little Sista. Dubus calls Alexis Dubus Versus The World a spoken word show because it kind of breaks all of the comedy category tropes. It is a little bit stand up, a little bit pantomime, a little bit cabaret, a little bit punny, and he even throws in a little bit of burlesque just to shake the apple from the tree. All of it definitely falls into th

What: Marcel Lucont's Whine List When: 10 - 22 April Where: Beckett Theatre, Coopers Malthouse Created and performed by: Alexis Dubus Marcel Lucont Marcel Lucont's Whine List is a kind of humour which definitely appeals to people who watch the world in despairing wonder - people like me. Lucont ( Dubus ) is playing in The Beckett Theatre at Coopers Malthouse for the next two weeks of the Comedy Festival and I really recommend it. Lucont has a fine stand up routine, disdainfully and yet elegantly delivering observations about the curious things he encounters as he travels around the world. If you watched Tonightly with Tom Ballard a week ago you would have seen Lucont do a guest appearance. In that segment he comments on the intriguing way each state welcomes it's guests on the signage. He is completely mystified and miffed that only people named Vic are welcome in Melbourne. The true genius of his show though, lies not in his stories, but the stories he elici

What: Massive Bitch When: 2 - 8 April 2018 Where: The Butterfly Club Written and performed by: Chelsea Zeller Directed by: Samuel Russo Chelsea Zeller I first came across Zeller in last year's Comedy Festival when she wowed me with her performance in High Achievers . I was very excited to find out she was back for this year's festival with Massive Bitch at The Butterfly Club. Zeller didn't disappoint. As I commented in the High Achievers review, Zeller has an amazing ability to perform multiple characters without a single misstep. She totally understands the connection between voice, body and character and in Massive Bitch she once again demonstrates her world class skill playing somewhere around ten characters in this TV talk show parody. Massive Bitch is satire in the vein of ABC's Get Krack!n  although Zeller's work is not farce. Perhaps a closer pairing can be found in Chamber Made Opera's production Crossing Live in 2007. The story is t