Comfest 2002 Articles

[cyborgsnail]

How many comedians does it take to make a festival?
By Fiona Scott-Norman
March 19 2002


There has to be a reason why Melbourne loves comedy so much. Other Australian cities like a laugh, but Melburnians so adore comedy that our month-long comedy festival is in the world's top three, ranked alongside Edinburgh and Montreal.

My theory is elegant and simple; we love comedy because it is the closest art can come to sport. The relationship between performer and audience is gladiatorial, the atmosphere is electric, and the comic needs the roar of the crowd to succeed. Every time a stand-up steps on stage, there is potential for a glorious victory or ignominious death, and the outcome is always uncertain. Comedy equals adrenalin. The Melbourne International Comedy Festival is the Grand Prix, the Grand Final, the Melbourne Cup, of the arts world.

The proof is in the transformation Melbourne undergoes each April. Posters and flags burst forth like ripe fruit and brash flowers after a tropical downpour. The Town Hall transforms from a stiff municipal office into an intoxicating pressure cooker of venues, performers, punters, groupies and journos. Queues bristle their way down Swanston Street and disappear round the corner. Dozens of unlikely buildings reinvent themselves as comedy venues, the streets throb, and the city is charged and reclaimed with a new energy. For the month of April, the Melbourne night no longer belongs to drug dealers and drunk men trying to hail taxis.

For all that it is an international festival, with exceptional comics from the UK and America taking part, one of the great joys of this year's MICF is the fact that all the big drawcards are Australian: Lano and Woodley, Rachel Berger, Merrick and Rosso, Paul McDermott, Rod Quantock, Dave Hughes, Adam Spencer, Bob Downe, Puppetry of the Penis, The Umbilical Brothers, Wil Anderson.

Some may bemoan the lack of a Stephen Wright or Eddie Izzard, but the presence of an international star has a lot less relevance than it used to as Australians vote with their feet for local content - last year's biggest box-office names were Dave Hughes and Dave O'Neil.


Susan Provan, the festival's director for eight years, thinks that Australian performers have been the stars for some time. "When I first came to the comedy festival, one of the things that gave me the shits was everyone asking 'Who's coming out, who's famous?' For a start, we can't afford anyone famous. But, thank God, people have moved away from that. We've built our reputation on bringing out comics who no one here necessarily knows but who represent the best of what's going on in the rest of the world.''

This reputation building relies heavily on bringing acts out more than once, capitalising on the following they've built up. "That's how we make the money to pay for things like Class Clowns and Raw Comedy,'' says Provan of two of the festival's most popular initiatives - the two events search for the funniest kid and stand-up newcomer in Australia. The Class Clowns grand final is on Thursday, April 18, at 11am; the Raw Comedy final at 5pm on Sunday, April 14.

MICF has brought back several English acts for 2002. Proudly middle-class comic Chris Addison returns with his latest show about British foibles, Port Out Starboard Home, which puts the English abroad under his withering microscope.

In contrast is The Pub Landlord, the invention of satirist and Perrier Award winning comic Al Murray. The Pub Landlord is an exquisitely observed, racist, sexist buffoon, and if you missed him in 1998 you'd be advised to book now.

This year also sees the return of whimsical poet John Hegley, who has joined forces with the super-cerebral performance art comic Simon Munnery to produce The Journals, a bizarre and gentle storytelling show.

Provan is particularly excited by The Journals. "It was the show I loved most at last year's Edinburgh Festival. I'm always thrilled when comics meet and create new work together. To me that cross-pollination is what festivals are about.''

Other hot tips from Provan include Melbourne Town Hall shows The Art of Schmoozing by Anthony Menchetti and Damian Clark; Proxy Heroes from Barry nominees Damian Callinan and Lawrence Mooney; Boiling Point (where civil war is declared on Tasmania) by Charlie Pickering and Michael Chamberlain; and Bob Franklin and Marty Sheargold's show, Bob and Marty on Ice (The Comics Lounge).

The most exciting new overseas face this year is Daniel Kitson, a disarming young British comic with a pronounced stutter, thick glasses and improbable facial hair. He's a genuinely great comic - and as one UK paper noted, he definitely didn't sleep his way to the top - and was nominated for the Perrier at last year's Edinburgh Festival. As was Australian comic Adam Hills, whose new show, Happy Feet, is about his artificial leg.

People always expect a bit of controversy from the comedy festival, but there is nothing obviously shocking in the program. Puppetry of the Penis has returned, but we're innoculated against their glandular antics and, let's face it, any show which has taken more than $10 million at the box office and has five franchises simultaneously touring the world is only shocking people in a pleasant way.

My money is on A Great Big American Stand Up Show, which features four American comics: Rene Hicks, the first African-American woman to be nominated for the American Comedy Awards; African-American-Jewish comic Greer Barnes; New Yorker Tony Woods; and sophisticated San Franciscan Sue Murphy.

The first two weeks of the run will feature Hicks, Barnes and Woods, an entirely African-American line-up and a gangsta style of comedy which we rarely get in Australia. "It's from an entirely different cultural and environmental context and I think that's important. If any show is going to take people outside of their comfort zones, it will be this one,'' Provan says.

It's impressive that Provan has managed to secure these performers at all. Due to irreconcilable timing issues, MICF falls squarely during TV pilot season in the US. Each year, America's hottest comics spend April making sitcom pilots.

"It's such a struggle getting their agents to let them leave Hollywood,'' says Provan, who curates only about 5 per cent of MICF. Most of the festival, as with the Fringe Festival, is open to anyone.

The festival's energy is likely to centralise this year, as venues continue to cluster around the Melbourne Town Hall and more peripheral venues drop off.

With Mietta's re-opened as 7 Alfred Place and St Paul's Cathedral (which is hosting Thou Shalt Laugh, a stand-up show featuring two Anglican priests), there are 17 venues within easy walking distance of the Town Hall.

Those few extra city blocks may explain why Black Box at the Victorian Arts Centre has fallen right off the map and Trades Hall is clinging to life with only one show, a circus-based cabaret called Das Uber Show. Trades Hall was initially intended as a multi-room sister venue to the Town Hall, and last year hosted about 20 shows. ``I'm disappointed that it hasn't worked,'' says Provan. ``And I hope that further down the track someone can make a go of it. It's a fantastic venue, but you can't make people go somewhere they don't want to go.''

The slack has been taken up partly by the festival pushing more shows into the same number of venues with more early and late-night time slots, and venues such as The Store Room in North Fitzroy and The Comics Lounge in North Melbourne, which have consolidated beautifully as thrumming satellite festival venues.

Others shows to look out for this year include the return of Alice Springs sensation Fiona O'Laughlin; cheesy cabaret show The Cheese Brothers; Paul McDermott's GUD: Hard Core Cabaret; improviser Ross Noble's Slackers Playtime; Greg Fleet in his imaginatively named show, Greg; Rachel Berger's Perfect; new shows from Tripod (Lady Robots) and The Four Noels (A Night At Fat Willy's); and Moosehead Nominee Scott Brennan in Glen Bush Teenage Superstar. Also worth checking out is Barry and inaugural Age Critic Award winner Brian Munich's new show, Lord of the Ringos.

The Melbourne International Comedy Festival begins on March 28. The Age is a festival sponsor

[Nick]

*HISSES A ONE EVIL NAME* THEY are NOT comedy!! THEY are tools!! THEY should die *ATTACKS THE SCREEN(again)*