http://www.theage.com.au/news/arts-r...971225788.html 
COMEDY FESTIVAL REVIEW ***½
The blues had a baby and they called it rock'n'roll. Bob Downe and The Whitlam's Tim Freedman had a baby and they called him Sammy J.
Part cabaret, part
Gilligan's Island, part breaking news story,
Cyclone is a wonderfully inventive, epic tale of a man who chases a twister out of love for Helen Hunt.
Sam McMillan, J's altar ego, is 58 kilograms of musical entertainment with a mysterious talent for bringing the storm chaser out in all of us.
Cyclone is where the
Wizard of Oz cross-pollinates with the nightly news to produce bawdy songs about year 9 students finding sexual healing with rigid digits in the dark.
It's a show with the lot: Prima juice, prank calls, emergency updates from newsreader Peter Mitchell, a faux-cyclone Mexican-wave sound and light spectacular, a solo duet and a kung fu fighting polar bear.
One or two of J's songs don't quite hit the comical heights hoped for but the young comic is thoroughly original and brilliant fun to shelter from the storm with.
Cyclone is never heavy weather. Older teenagers will adore this show.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/arts-r...971225760.html Josh Earl is a Librarian COMEDY FESTIVAL REVIEW ***
JOSH Earl may be a librarian, but he's also a charmer. From the moment he comes on stage, guitar in hand, he disarms the audience with his tales of a Brunswick Street Emo Man (the indie-grunge version of Metrosexual), the geek-chic librarian who's almost too cool for school.
Trouble is, once he's established who he is, he doesn't really take it anywhere. There are a couple of funny songs that demonstrate sharp skills of social observation: one about a phone conversation with his parents, and one about a serious-minded indie girl who doesn't understand his irony, but there comes a point when his charm and grungy gloss wear off, and he just becomes cocky. At 25 years of age, it seems that's all he's got to say
http://www.theage.com.au/news/arts-r...971141009.html Mickey D COMEDY FESTIVAL REVIEW **½
AT THE other end of the intellectual spectrum to
Science-ology are fart jokes, and this is how Mickey D starts
Shame 101. He then moves on to masturbation and porn, but there's more than meets the eye here. Mickey D is no foul-mouthed shock stand-up of the old school but a rather likeable guy whose self-appointed mission is to stop people feeling ashamed of their desires and experiences.
With mike in hand, roaming about the room, he tells us about his sex life and an encounter with colonic irrigation; and it's all so frank and engaging that you find yourself laughing. There's easy humour in Mickey's self-deprecating approach and in the bizarre imagery he deftly creates in the audience's minds.
