Comedy Festival lacks laughs

Maybe I'm just going in with my expectations set to high, or perhaps its because I'm a cynical fucker, but I've been underwhelmed by the shows I've seen so far at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival this year.

Charlie Pickering's 'Betterman' is a one-man show from this up and coming young Australian comedian which outlines his quest to improve his body, mind and soul. While occasionally provoking guffaws, Pickering was let down by his reliance on a power-point presentation of images, quotes and visual gags; his constant fiddling with the remote drained the show of any momentum every time he tried to cue up a new image. Ironically the funniest moment in the show came about when Pickering accidentally set the computer into fast-forward, resulting in a rapid succession of images being thrown up on screen out of sequence, and causing a flustered Pickering to almost panic.

Wil Anderson came on stage sweating so profusely he had to towel himself down every three minutes or so, and talking so rapidly that he gave the impression of being totally off his dial. Sadly the quality of the material he was presenting didn't match the pace of his delivery, although the audience were lapping up his hit-and-miss comments - the benefit of having a JJJ profile I suspect. They would have laughed at anything. Five or six years ago Anderson was a genuinely astute and funny stand up comedian. Having such a sycophantic audience seems to have resulted in Anderson becoming lazy; he needs to cut out at least half his material and work a lot harder at being funny, in my opinion, if he is going to recapture his former strengths as a comic.

Rod Quantock is still bloody funny, but I can't help thinking that he is perhaps a little past his prime. His rambling delivery and tangential stories were lapped up by his left-leaning audience in yet another case of preaching to the converted, although to be fair, Quantock was often extremely entertaining, although mostly in a constant smile and occasional chuckle kind of way. Certainly he didn't make enough of an impression on me to enable me to remember most of his material a week later, save for his lecture on the causes of the recent rise in interest rates... Compared to Anderson, who I saw on the same night, he was significantly harder-working and more consistently funny, however.

Sue-Ann Post in 'God Loves Me He Just Hates What I'm Doing' has so far been my festival highlight - especially her vigourous demonstration of rooting bunnies, and her presentation of a lighting-rod just in case God tried to strike her down. While the constant spruiking of her new book and TV show (which tie in neatly with the festival show, and which explore her recent trip to a Mormon gay and lesbian convention in Salt Lake City) became a little tiresome, she still presented a tight, strong and bloody funny one-hour show.

That same night I went to see The Umbilical Brothers in 'Rehersal', a show who's conceit is that we're watching the performers rehearse their new show, and which rapidly become tiresome. There's only so many pratfalls I can watch; ditto clowning around with a video camera, and pretending that the angry producers are waiting off in the wings, wondering when they're actually going to see the show they've paid for.

Rebecca De Unanumo is a winner of the Moosehead Award from last year, which gives her the money to stage her own solo show in this year's festival. This is the only show I've walked out of so far, although I gave her a full half hour. While her ability to switch between characters was good, and the characterisations of a taxi driver, a jaded british peer, and a socially awkward and obsessive school girl were strong, her script wasn't. Most of the time it was plain unfunny. Shame really, as a couple of industry people have told she's a fantastic improviser...

Gavin Baskerville is another Moosehead winner, and another comedian whose weak show was let down by stretching gags about TV into a full hour, and by the performer's over-reliance on his prop television. Like Charlie Pickering, his momentum was lost by his reliance on the images appearing on the tv screen. Trim the weakest gags back by half an hour and he could have had a much better show.

Sean Lock from the UK didn't do much for me either - his style of stand-up is very old school, very deadpan, and jumps around randomly from subject to subject without bothering to link the material. Rather dull really.

That's it so far - I'm off to see a few more shows this week so I'l let you know my thoughts...cynical as they are! I'm hoping that Scottish comedian Danny Bhoy will be good - he better be, seeing as he stood me up for an interview on 3RRR!